A common question which people kept on pondering from march on-wards is that when can we get back to the way of life which we used to have before the wrath of a virus hit globally. For the first time in the history of India since independence, a population of more than 1.3 billion was forced to stay indoors to narrow down the effect of COVID-19. A task indeed challenging for the government, administration, and the public but the inevitable question of repercussions of Lockdown 1.0 to 4.0 and Unlock 1.0 will require far more substantiated answers.
India witnessed its first lockdown from March 25th when the no. of infected people was 657. By mid-June, India is the 4th worst affected country in the world with 3, 32,901(as on 15th June). Globally this virus has infected 78,45,048 and claimed 4,31,418 lives (as on 15th June). Although the lockdown significantly reduced the no. of cases of Covid-19, the economy and human life had to and continues to pay a heavy price for it. With nearly 10,000 cases being reported across the country daily, the infections are bound to increase at an exponential rate in the coming days. From the executives to the migrant workers, the well-established businesses to the freshly brewed start-ups, the pandemic trembled a very fundamental structure of the economy. Indian start-ups (almost 9 out of 10) reported a decline in revenues and almost 1/3rd of them to plan to halt the operations as per a report by NASSCOM. A survey conducted by NASSCOM from over 250 start-ups across the sectors has revealed that around 60% of all B2C start-ups were on the verge of closure and as high as 92% of start-ups were facing a decline in revenues.
Source: Economic times
Various major players in the business sectors have announced Layoffs and deduction in salary as a part of operational cost-cutting. Some of the major players include:
Ola- 1,400 employees, Zomato- 13% of the workforce, Swiggy- 14% of the workforce, Uber- 600 employees, Reliance Industries- from 10% to 50% based on the designation of executive, OYO- 25%. An inevitable question is that what will be the business strategy of these companies and a list of others to come out of the crisis.
After 72 years of independence, the country witnessed one of the worst migrant labour crises during the pandemic. As per the prediction of the International Labour organization 400 million migrants were affected by the lockdown. It was indeed seen than more than 25 lakh migrant workers set on foot for their homes post lockdown as the fear of hunger looming around them was more than the fear of the virus. Horrific media reports came up with the tragic death of laborers across the country. The bigger question is whether it could have been avoided with some better strategies? Although the governments of different states along with the centre tried their best to deal with the crisis but was that enough? The unemployment rate in India in the aftermath of COVID-19 was projected to be 27.11%. Although there is a decline in the projected unemployment rate as India is in a phase of exiting the lockdown. The unemployment rate has gone down to 11.63% in the week ended June 14 as per CMIE (Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy).
The World Bank has already predicted the global economy to shrink by 5.2%. As per an updated report of the World Bank on the impact of COVID-19 around 71 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty if the international poverty baseline is taken as 1.90$ per day (around 144.69 INR). The World Bank has also predicted that Nigeria, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo are projected to have -0.8%, 2.1% and 0.3% respectively per capita growth rate in Real GDP.
So finally comes the big question: how early can we have a vaccine to ensure the safety against this virus. Being a former student of biology, I was curious to know the stages of vaccine development. The vaccine development process has been quite long in the past but is taking an effectively faster rate for getting it available for the globe. Safety and efficacy are two important parameters for the development of a vaccine. The vaccine development stages are:
Phase 1: Safety trial on healthy volunteers. This can be done only if the correct formula for the vaccine has been developed by identifying the correct genomic sequence of the virus.
Phase 2: If phase 1 clears the clinical trials and shows promising results, then the sample size gets increased on people likely to get in the vaccination.
Phase 3: This is a crucial stage for a longer period. Wherein the natural conditions of vaccination are analysed on the people who are already infected. This also has a larger no. respondent.
Once all the stages have been cleared the standardization and normalization steps take place by WHO and government agencies.
Source: gatesnotes.com
United States based Biotech Company Moderna has finalized the phase 3 of clinical trial. US stocks had earlier shown bullish trend as there were positive results from phase 1 trial. In addition to this researcher of Oxford University promise to make the vaccine readily by the end of this year. These are testing times for world and it is essential to take special protective care. Though India has ramped up its no. of testing but there is still significant increase in the no. of cases on a daily basis. Till the vaccine is developed special care and attention needs to be taken as the world hopes to get back to normalcy soon.
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