The U.S. has been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic as numbers for those infected and those dying are not slowing down, and as a result, places like most schools and most offices are requiring people to continue their work from home.

For Frisco ISD parent Rajendra Lodha, the quarantine hasn’t really affected his work life, but has greatly affected his feelings about protecting his family even more.

“There are multiple aspects to look at this coronavirus situation: first is fear; second is work, and third is health,” Rajendra said. “There’s this fear inside of me that is building up because these statistics are growing to be pretty bad, with not really any sign of slowing down, and the first thought that comes to my head is: ‘Is my family going to be okay?’ I am now required to work from home which allows me to spend time with the kids and keep an eye on them, but my wife’s in the medical field, and when she comes home everyday from her job, there is this huge fear in all of us, that if one of her patients was infected, she could be too and she could possibly spread the virus.”

Smeetha Lodha is scared to go to work and come back everyday because of a feeling of contracting the virus and spreading it to her family.

“Everyday, when I go to work, I always have a feeling that I might catch the coronavirus,” Smeetha said. “We have come to a point in our lives where going to work is such a scary thing. I am exposed to many things during work, and so whenever I come home, I am so afraid that I would spread whatever I may have caught to my family members. It has affected my work so much because even though we have a less number of patients now, we have to do whatever we can to stop the virus from spreading which is incredibly stressful.”

Another Frisco ISD parent believes that the outbreak had increased his work load and put stress on him and his family about contracting the virus whenever they go out

“My job requires me to travel and even though I work from home a lot, this coronavirus situation has prevented me from flying to other cities to work,” the parent said. “I am a CIO and because we all we forced to work from home, my main focus for these past couple of days was to make sure everyone in IT got laptops and VPNs and all of the resources they needed to work from home easily, which was quite stressful. The only time we are nervous is when we have to go grocery shopping because that is the place where so many people from all around the place go to and you don’t even know where they’ve been, which is a scary thing to think about.”

Rajendra pleads to people to stay inside as much as possible.  

“While I know it isn’t possible for everyone to work from home, like my wife, for example, has to go everyday because she’s in the medical field,” he said. “I really hope that people actually take this seriously and try to not go out of their houses for no reason. Just staying safe is all I can hope now.”