By Akshay Sharma
The Coronavirus pandemic has wreaked havoc on the entire world today and has taken a tremendous human toll and menaced the world economy to an unthinkable level.
In this period of crisis, it is essential that companies across the industry should work now for the protection of the customers and employees and get prepared for the world after lockdown.
As the reopening of the economies takes place gradually, it is better to assess the epidemiological trends and situations that will define the months ahead.
The official counts of Covid-19 cases and deaths have crossed the 51 lakhs and 3 lakhs mark worldwide respectively with over 1 lakh cases and 3.5k deaths in India.
The recent studies have shown that each of these figures happens to be an underestimate. Moreover, there are still many places within the Indian subcontinent as well as in other countries where a constant rise of cases is witnessed.
The next few weeks are crucial in determining whether we will be able to bend the curve.
Here are a few trends that the leaders of private sectors need to monitor.
1. There Are Places Where the Epidemic is Getting Worse – While media is focussing mainly on reopening, there are many emerging economies that are on the upslope of the epidemic with a rise of daily case counts still, an augmented number of regions have proven that they can use lockdowns for driving a reduction in cases.
However, outside the High-Income communities and countries, very few have succeeded in doing that.
The next weeks are crucial to see how many regions are succeeding in achieving the conversions. The Covid 19 interventions are to be viewed in context of both lives and livelihoods.
2. Reopening Is a Huge Risk, So Learn as You Progress– Modern global economy has never been shut down before and never has it been reopened amidst a pandemic. Nothing is certain as of now about what will work and what will not.
Places like Singapore and Hong Kong that had strong initial responses also face issues as they reopen.
China has seen a rise in cases after reopening. Even based on the same dynamic fact base, the companies are planning different approaches.
So leaders must concentrate on learning and adapting into the reopening of plans from the beginning.
Geographies, peers, competitors, and even other sectors can help you to learn relevant lessons. The leaders should be prepared to learn and alter their approaches with new information radically or incrementally.
3. Reducing ‘R0’ is Essential But So is the Number of New Cases – R0 (pronounced R naught) is the transmissibility of the pathogen.
The average number of people to whom each person who is infected transmits is represented by R0.
It tells how fast the pandemic will shrink or expand. Values less than one define a shrinking epidemic while those greater than 1 define a growing epidemic.
R0 is very important parameter in recent times but the absolute number of cases are also essential for defining the packages of intervention.
This is because if you imagine two places each with an R0 of 0.8 (implying a declining epidemic) but one has 10 cases per day while the other has 100, naturally the latter one has a much higher risk in reopening.
4.Testing, Tracing and Targeted Quarantining Are Still Important – Significant resources are essential for running a program of testing, contact tracing, isolating and quarantining. But relative to the economics of global recession and lockdown these costs are trivial. You must strengthen these parameters. Keep the below metrics in mind –
- Test Positivity Rate
- Tests per million population
- Average number of contacts identified per case
- Fraction of cases arising from contact lists
5. Innovation and Clinical Evidence Lead to Hope – The scale and speed of R&D response to the Coronavirus is unprecedented. Massive investments are made on vaccines, drugs and diagnostics for the virus. The past few months witnessed the launch of numerous trials in the search of therapies and vaccines.
As we fight hand in hand with the current situation, we all wish that we can eventually control the current situation and look ahead for brighter days.
Businesses today apart from keeping the above in mind, can also hire the Event management experts for the hosting virtual events in Corona times! After all, we have to transform with the demand of time to survive and excel.
About Author:
The author is a digital marketing enthusiast and has written many topics in the related field. He works with Wonderland Agency, an experiential event agency in the UK.
