The COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on life
Ande Aditya
?? Thailand Business Expert | Founder & CEO, Aditya Group | Entrepreneur | Business Consultant | Inspiring Growth & Creativity | Empowering Businesses | #AndeInspires ??
In just a few months, the COVID-19 crisis has brought about years of change in the way companies in all sectors and regions do business. Companies are estimated to have accelerated the digitization of their customer and supply-chain interactions and that of their internal operations by three to four years. The share of digital or digitally enabled products in their portfolios has accelerated by around seven years. Companies have come up with at least temporary solutions to meet many of the new demands on them. These happened much more quickly than they had thought possible before the crisis. It is expected that most of these changes would be long lasting. Thus they are already making planned kinds of investments that are somewhat ensured to stick. Funding for digital initiatives has increased more than anything else—more than increases in costs, the number of people in technology roles, and the number of customers.
Like the rest of the world, Thailand has been severely hit by a surge of COVID-19 cases in the third quarter of 2021. Thailand’s economic activity has subsequently rebounded and is expected to grow by around 1.0 percent in the coming year, according to the World Bank’s latest Thailand Economic Monitor “Living with COVID in a Digital World” published in December 2021. Going forward, the adoption of digital technologies has the potential to support Thailand’s recovery from COVID-19 and ensure a more competitive economy over the longer term.
By the end-2022, economic activity is expected to return to its pre-pandemic levels. With progress on vaccinations and a resumption of tourist activity providing support for the recovery, the economy is expected to develop.?Driven by a recovery in service sector activity, growth is projected to accelerate to 3.9 percent in 2022 and 4.3 percent in 2023. Without any further resurgence of COVID-19 and regular vaccinations, consumer confidence and international tourist confidence is expected to strengthen.
The key catalysts for the economy to achieve the pre-COVID output level by the end of 2022 are continuous vaccine distribution policies that continue to protect citizens, domestic travel?and increased local mobility, as per reports.?The pace of the recovery will depend on the extent of the pick-up in foreign tourists and domestic consumption.
COVID-19 has rapidly affected our day to day life, businesses, disrupted world trade and movements. Identification of the disease at an early stage is vital to control the spread of the virus because it very rapidly spreads from person to person. Most of the countries have slowed down their manufacturing of the products. Various industries and sectors are affected by the cause of this disease; these include the pharmaceuticals industry, solar power sector, tourism, Information and electronics industry. This virus creates significant knock-on effects on the daily life of citizens, as well as on the global economy.
The impacts of COVID-19 in daily life are extensive and have far- reaching consequences, which can be divided into various categories:
● Challenges in the diagnosis, treatment of suspected or confirmed cases
● Functioning of the existing medical system is disrupted
● Patients with other diseases and health problems are getting neglected amidst fear of Covid contamination
● Doctors and other healthcare professionals are at a very high risk and also overloaded with work
● Overloading of medical shops
● Disruption of medical supply chain
2. Economy and Business
● Slowing of the manufacturing of essential goods
● The Supply chain of products is disrupted
● Losses in national and international business
● Poor cash flow in the market
● Significant slowing down in the revenue growth
● Boundaries became merged in businesses with the logarithmic growth of supply chain networks to support consumers demands while geographically they were away.
● The Meteoric rise in the number of start-ups replacing traditional businesses.
● Investments became optimised but still could deliver the same volume and quality. Digitally enabled productivity gains are making way for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
● Research revealed that the majority of the workforce believed that their productivity has increased while working from home. Thus comes as a welcome change as remote working has had a social stigma attached to its name for long.?
● Across the globe, business leaders realised the futility and vulnerability of following very long-term statistical goals, which may drastically be toppled any day with such unknown factors as the pandemic. Thus, short to long term goals seem more achievable and thus feasible.?
While, across the globe the government has taken several steps to advance the digital agenda, more can be done to develop digital services and spur the digitalization of businesses. This includes promoting competition and incentivizing interoperability in digital markets, raising the availability of digital and complementary skills, and enhancing access to innovation finance.
3. Social
● Service sector unable to provide proper service
● Cancellation or postponement of large-scale sports,tournaments and events?
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● Disruption in the national and international travelling and cancellation of services
● Disruption of celebration of cultural, religious and festive events
● Undue stress among the population
● Social distancing with our peers and family members. People have learnt to connect with others remotely more often. As a result of the social integration, families and communities engage in a high level of social cohesion or social conscience to face the difficult situation
● Trust and transparency have revived with family members spending more time with each other?
● Closure of the hotels, restaurants and religious places
● Closure of places for entertainment such as movie and play theatres, sports clubs, gymnasiums, swimming pools, and so on.?
● Without much recreational choice left, people have developed constructive and value-added activities as hobbies
4. Education and Occupation
During the pandemic, with such unprecedented situations prevailing, the measures to deal with have been equally unprecedented.?
● Educational institutions across the globe had to resort to online teaching.?
● Teachers had to come up with their own ways to impart online education.
● Students had to cope with the new format of virtual education.
● The entire process of virtual education has a few drawbacks like higher dependency on technology, the difficulty for the students to understand the concepts taught, the challenges faced by both the parties who are not technologically much sound. However, the process has provided the necessary flexibility of attending classes, increased comfort of not having to travel during these troubling times and the likes.
● The use of electronic media to run online classes and the boom of innovative sessions to prepare lessons in a way that can be delivered over remotely and online assessments happened as the days progressed amidst the pandemic. Innovating new teaching methods in order to hold the attention of the students attending online and to convey the lessons in the appropriate manner are some of the best measures that were seen to grow during these trying times.
● Examinations got postponed for quite a considerable amount of time. With passing days, slowly the education system has started conducting examinations in a phasic manner through both online and offline mode.?
● People employed had to redesign the way they work for their respective organisations. The new mode of working “Work from Home” came up as the only mode for almost all working professionals, except the frontline warriors. This trend has brought in a lot of flexibility.??
To stay competitive in this new business and economic environment requires new strategies and practises.
The loss of lives because of the pandemic leads to unmistakable damages to the general public. The COVID-19 pandemic has extremely impacted the global economy. It is very important to restrict the further spread of the infection in the society and for this, a majority of the nations have opted for a strict decision of nation lockdown. These circumstances have severely affected the business transportations of different countries and have led to an economic crisis. Traders who were completely dependent on the transportation systems, have been affected the most due to this pandemic. Also, due to a significant increase in the number of infective cases, the daily worker count has decreased leading to a major impact on industrial sectors. Economies of various nations are presently facing the issue of increased joblessness due to lack of productivity and more consumption for the cure and renewal of the COVID-19 fatalities and their relatives. Lockdown or shut-down have reasonably influenced the GDP of each nation in the substantial economic aspects. Recently, the GDP of a few Asian, European and South-American nations have declined very certainly and this could significantly lead to devastating consequences in the upcoming days. The economic and social life of people of these countries has been affected severely by the post-pandemic situations. The government and other regulating agencies of these nations should have taken some severe actions, either independently or with mutual consents and discussions.
The pandemic situation may increase the level of innovations amongst the people. Some creative-minded people may introduce many effective and productive primary and secondary things, efficient ways and means of production, low-cost productions, technological advancements, etc. These trends may strengthen the supply chain network at national and regional levels. The greatest investment we could make now is in the research, development and fair distribution of tests, vaccines and treatments. The investment needed relies on countries and international organisations showing leadership, pooling resources together and acknowledging the fact that this crisis can only be overcome if we act together.
This is the time for global solidarity and support, especially with the most vulnerable in our societies, particularly in the emerging and developing world. Only together can we overcome the intertwined health, social and economic impacts of the pandemic and prevent its escalation into a protracted humanitarian and food security catastrophe, with the potential loss of already achieved development gains. We must rethink the future of our environment and realise the need to tackle climate change and environmental degradation with ambition and urgency. This way, we can protect the health, livelihoods, food security and nutrition of all people, and ensure that our ‘new normal’ is a better one.
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As a Business Startup Specialist,?Ande is often hired as a?Virtual Director/Consultant?to assist Business Owners in Thailand. For total business information and consulting for doing business in Thailand - Pls check -?startupinthailand.com