COVID 19 or Coronavirus disease has become a global pandemic. This pandemic is affecting the health of the public and stamping its impact on economy worldwide. According to Worldometer statistics, to date, 216822 cases have been diagnosed with 8,908 deaths and 84,383 recovered in 172 countries and territories around the world along with an international conveyance (Diamond Princess Cruise Ship harbored in Japan).
COVID 19 ranges from common cold to MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome and SARS Sever e Acute Respiratory Syndrome. Commonly, this virus circulates in animals but, some of these have capability of transmission to humans, and this transmission process is named as spillover event.
Since December, 2019, COVID 19 remains in the news for disturbing the health industry and the financial condition of every business all across the world. Many of the large organizations including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, and Twitter have asked their staff to work from home. These giants also recommend other companies to avail this facility to their employees too, in order to control the transmission of this deadly virus further. As per the Google’s words, “Since the first week of February, search interest in coronavirus has been increased by 260% globally.”
Currently, the US has banned travelling to high-risk countries, and few others have put restrictions on non-essential travel. With these restrictions, interest in cheap flights has grown by 90%, and interest in cheap flights due to coronavirus has increased by 2,450%, over the last 30 days.
According to UN Conference on Trade and Development, the coronavirus outbreak might cost the global economy $1-2 trillion in 2020.
Rohan Williamson, the Professor of Finance at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business states, “It’s a potential threat to the global economy as it goes on longer.” “As an investor you’re trying to say, here’s this virus. What’s going to be the reaction with the worst case, if things get really bad?” he added. “So your response is going to be ‘prices drop,’ because you’re going to say, ‘I don’t want to be the one holding the security if things go really bad in a few months. So I will sell it right now’.”
According to Randy Frederick, the Vice President of trading and derivatives at Charles Schwab, Nike and Apple also get a bit of a double whammy. Randy said, “These are two companies that manufacture a significant amount of their products in China, but they also sell a significant amount of products to China.”
Richard Baldwin, a professor of international economics at the Graduate Institute in Geneva stated, “This virus is as economically contagious as it is medically contagious. This one is economically big, because it is now hitting the big economies. The size of the economic shock is a different order of magnitude than any pandemic we have seen.”