Experienced creative professional focusing on financial and political analysis, editing daily newspapers and news sites, economical and political journalism, consulting, PR and Marketing. Teuta’s passion is to create new opportunities and bring people together.
We are all aware nowadays that the novel coronavirus affected the world markets. If we are talking about cryptocurrencies, Dow Jones or commodities it affected them all. Also, it affected people and their ability to invest. We already wrote that the management and consulting company McKinsey & Company did their briefing note on the implications of coronavirus to the companies.
At the time of writing, the overall number of people infected from the COVID-19 in the world was 601,536. The number of recovered people stands now at 133,454 while the death toll, unfortunately, reached 27,441.
According to McKinsey, U.S. has the biggest number of people infected with coronavirus – 104,256. Italy comes next with 86,498 infected and the death toll reaching 9,134.
McKinsey Reveals What Issues Businesses Have amid Coronavirus
McKinsey compiled the view regarding the companies that are most affected by the present situation. According to them, companies around the world are responding to the outbreak with five sets of actions:
- Workforce protection;
- Supply-chain stabilization;
- Customer engagement;
- Financial stress testing;
- Nerve-center integration.
While this list is fairly comprehensive, some companies said that they are taking other steps.
McKinsey also stressed that employee safety is the most important, but mechanisms are, for now, ineffective.
What we can expect for the countries and companies in it that most of them will not be able to achieve the same rapid control that, for example, China managed. For now, it seems that in Europe, the transmission is high but remains localized.
McKinsey wrote:
“In our base-case scenario, continued spread within established complexes, as well as community transmission in new complexes, drives a 0.3- to 0.7-percentage-point reduction in global GDP growth for 2020. China, meanwhile, continues on its path to recovery, achieving a near-complete economic restart by mid-Q2 (in spite of the current challenges of slow permissions and lack of migrant-worker capacity).”
OneWeb Filed for Relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code
Meanwhile, the company OneWeb announced it has “voluntarily filed for relief under Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code in the US Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The Company intends to use these proceedings to pursue a sale of its business in order to maximize the value of the company.”
Also, the firm managed to launch 74 satellites as part of its constellation, secure a valuable global spectrum, begin development on a range of user terminals for a variety of customer markets.
FDA Approves Quick Abbott COVID-19 test
In the meantime, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved on Friday a quick coronavirus test developed by Abbott Laboratories, which can deliver results within 5-13 minutes.
“Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the fastest available molecular point-of-care test for the detection of novel coronavirus (COVID-19), delivering positive results in as little as five minutes and negative results in 13 minutes,” the medical device company announced in a press release.
Gates: U.S. Should Shut Down over Coronavirus
And, speaking about companies, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates suggested the entire United States follow China’s example and shuts down like Hubei province amid the coronavirus pandemic to avoid exponential growth of infections.
The billionaire said that the 6-week shutdown of the epicenter of the outbreak in China was very effective. “If we do it right, we only have to do it once,” according to Gates, who added that “the sooner you engage in a shutdown the easier it is to get to that peak.”