What we learnt from a new catastrophe – Covid-19

Virus spreads in such a short period to impact global economy.

Covid-19 started to be perceived by public opinions in January 2020 when the city of Wuhan China was locked down on January 23, 2020 for more than two months.

Since then, the virus has been detected in more and more countries worldwide, people infected with various syndromes and specially a high death rate in elderly people at the beginning of diffusion. Countries in Asia, Europe and America began to ban lockdown rules one after the other from February and onwards.

The first impact resides on livelihood related business, such as retail, restaurants, whilst shopping centers closed immediately which caused a loss of income during this period.

The border within EU countries as well as with other Non-EU countries also closed for more than two months due to the rapid virus spread which resulted in a strong effect to the air and marine transportation business. For example, a big airlines group reported recently a €815 million first-quarter operating loss and so many air companies called for government financial support for next few months.

Furthermore, industrial, manufacturing, all kinds of micro-, small and medium sized enterprises have been heavily affected by Covid-19, the current and potential economic loss being greater than the economic impact of the global financial crisis in 2008.

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