COVID-19: An Invisible Enemy Impacting Million Lives

Abstract

Disease experts use the term ‘pandemic’ when a new infection spreads to multiple countries across the world affecting many people. WHO defines pandemic by evaluating three things: • Geographical spread of the virus • Severity of the disease • Societal impact of the disease.

COVID-19 which is supposed to be originated from a wet market in Wuhan, China was declared a pandemic by WHO in March 2020 and it is the sixth pandemic declared in about a century. There have been number of pandemics in the past like 1918 Spanish Flu which was the deadliest in 20th century, Asian Flu outbreak in 1957, Hong Kong Flu in 1968, HIV in 1983 and the Swine Flu in 2009. Amid the coronavirus pandemic, several countries across the world resorted to lockdowns to flatten the curve of the infection. These lockdowns meant confining millions of citizens to their homes, shutting down businesses and ceasing almost all the economic activity. The IMF’s estimate of the global economy growing at -3% in 2020 is an outcome far worse than the 2009 global financial crisis. Economies such as US, Japan, UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain are 5 expected to contract this year. The impact of this pandemic is supposed to push 400 million Indians back into poverty. Due to the fall in travel, the global industrial activity has also been affected. Oil prices fell to its lowest as the transportation section which accounts for 60% of the oil demand was hit due to several countries imposing lockdowns. Due to lockdowns in China, followed by the US and Europe, the demand for the industrial metals reduced as the factories shit down. IMF projected a decrease in the food prices by 2.6% in 2020.

Various industries have been hit by the impact of lockdown and there have been job losses around the world because of the shutdown of the production.

Further, as the economic activity resumes gradually, the situation will take time to normalize, as consumer behavior changes as a result of continued social distancing and uncertainty about how the pandemic will evolve. Therefore, broad monetary and fiscal stimuli will be required to coordinate on an international scale for the maximum impact and would be most effective to boost spending in the recovery phase.