When the pandemic hit globally on a normal March morning, none of us in the world had an estimate of its potential. Governments were not prepared, healthcare forces were meagre and industries along with economies were treading at the edge of a dangerously high cliff. The rest of the year was a living nightmare, worsening with each painful month, until a new found revolution of innovation has been now helping to pull the world back on its feet.
The year 2020 was a year of great recession of nearly every industry on a global scale, and it shows : the aviation industry, one which has shown a enormous boom over the past decades faced the sharpest decline in business like never before : the air passengers number fell from a 4.5 billion in 2019 to 1.8 billion in 2020 - a 60 percent decline. The pillars of automation and industrialization, the manufacturing units plummeted with crucially low workforce and quality assessments, reporting a 6.8% fall in a single year alone, halting the progress of every other business attached to it - namely resource mining, automobiles and the daily survival of the manual work contingents. The brutality of the pandemic has not let anyone down slightly, especially the customer services ranging from global hoteliers to local restaurants. The air of chaos has still to settle down now a year later in 2021 with spikes in infection rising and plummeting simultaneously in various parts of the world, and the definition of normalcy has not reached to its entirety.
The difficulties faced by industrialization have directly reflected on global infrastructure and the growth of economies ; the rapid effect of the killing virus was overwhelming to nearly every country, and there clearly was not enough time to brace for impact.
Covid 19 has caused a significant disruption in National Governments’ revenues, priorities and expenditures, with a still looming question on each economy’s capacities to now fill these needs. The sharp recessions are expected to be felt way beyond 2020, with the World Bank forecasting a minimum of 5.2 percent contraction in a single year alone. With more than 80 percent of global financial output dependent on cities with non usable public transits and low collected sales revenue, subnational governments have faced the brunt of the crisis at the frontlines and now the epicentre of damage responses.
Every event of revenue growth and booming industrialization is dependent on logistics or rapid delivery of goods and services. The pandemic led to global lockdowns and border closures, which was a direct hit on the heart of this industry, restricting the movement of goods. Additional protocols (such as social distancing at warehouses) introduced to ensure the safety of workers contributed to bottlenecks for freight. India can be one of the best examples to this situation, the lockdown, which continued for months created a shortage of truck drivers, which resulted in over 50,000 containers piling up in the city ports of Chennai, Kamajarar, and Kattupalli.
Innovation saving the times of crisis :
It’s often said that humans don’t realize their complete potential, until they are put in a situation to use it to survive. This is a common phenomenon of evolution, where nature assesses humans’ ability to adapt and realize immediate changes to societal routines.
The pandemic has given an impetus for a massive change in perspectives of companies and industries - from monopolizing competitions to organizational resilience and the ready ability to adapt to sudden changes.
First and foremost, the wave of organizational resilience has been currently changing the process development of the HR teams in organizations, which were put under tremendous pressure due to the sudden disappearance of process employees and lack of data security measures. These errors have brought the need for change into it with new technologies and management tactics, utilizing advanced technologies, such as blockchain and artificial intelligence, which will be used to secure contracts signed remotely and identify gaps in workers’ performance.
Humanitarian responses to the pandemic are seen to be focusing on improvements of existing aid processes which have shown to be insufficient to cater the needs of a huge ratio of infected patients; explained by the rapidly ascending market of vaccine developing giants, biomedical devices and pharmaceutical drugs. These efforts have been equally leveraged by all countries bringing in epidemiological and genomic research data to back the quick deployment of aiding utilities to the suffering population.
These developments can be listed down generally as :
● Rapidly developing and deploying tests, personal protective equipment (PPE), clinical procedures, pharmaceutical treatments, and the ultimate holy grail of reliable and safe vaccines to protect against COVID-19.
● Developing effective surveillance techniques and technologies for tracking and tracing cases.
● Identifying ways of reducing transmission, including appropriate measures for reducing social contact, shielding the most vulnerable, and quarantining suspected and known cases.
● Developing appropriate policies and interventions for dealing with social and economic effects, as well as ensuring a secure and sustainable longer-term recovery.
Conclusion - Global anticipatory efforts
The terrible past year and a half has compelled governments to rethink what human life post the COVID 19 pandemic should look like. These new commitments are focusing on innovative national policies to address immediate health qualities, civic participation and promotion of a standard for global technology, to assist the common man to survive social solidarity and a disruption of normal workflow. Investments on efforts to propel a reset of systems are urged, to dispel future possibilities of vulnerability, to ensure a more sustainable footing to economies and human life.
References :
5) https://www.forbes.com/sites/serenitygibbons/2021/01/05/how-covid-19-is-shaping-the-future-of-innovation/?sh=54e8180d5d61
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