COVID-19 Monitor

Last Updated:October 15, 2020

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U.S. power industry may ask key employees to live at work if coronavirus worsens (Reuters) Published on: March 20, 2020 | Category: Global Response, Leadership

The U.S. electric industry may ask essential staff to live on site at power plants and control centers to keep operations running if the coronavirus outbreak worsens, and has been stockpiling beds, blankets, and food for them, according to industry trade groups and electric cooperatives.
Scott Aaronson, vice president of security and preparedness at the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) said that some “companies are already either sequestering a healthy group of their essential employees or are considering doing that and are identifying appropriate protocols to do that.”
“When continuous remote work is not possible, businesses should enlist strategies to reduce the likelihood of spreading the disease,” the guidance stated.

Volvo back to ‘normal’ in China as it shuts EU and US car plants (FT) Published on: March 20, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

Volvo Cars said its Chinese business had returned to “normal”, offering a ray of hope to European and US carmakers that have shuttered operations in the face of the global coronavirus pandemic.
Carmakers have in the past week announced the closures of every large European plant and more than 100 facilities across North and South America in a wave of measures to impede the spread of the virus.
“We need to plan for normality after Easter, to give people a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Mr Samuelsson. “Let’s hope that will be the case. Continuing to Christmas would be a disaster.”

To solve the economic crisis, we will have to solve the health-care crisis (Washington Post) Published on: March 20, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

This is not an economic crisis; it is a health-care crisis.
In an economic crisis, you could imagine a situation in which people lose their jobs and are unable to spend money.
In these conditions, cash to consumers cannot jump-start consumption. Relief to producers will not jump-start production.
The federal government should announce a Manhattan Project-style public-private partnership to find and produce a vaccine.

Nvidia makes its GPU-powered genome sequencing tool available free to those studying COVID-19 (TechCrunch) Published on: March 19, 2020 | Category: Global Response, Leadership

Nvidia is making its Parabricks tool available for free for 90 days (with the possibility of extension, depending on needs) to any researcher currently working on any effort to combat the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic and spread of COVID-19.
Speed is of the essence when it comes to every aspect of the continued effort to fight the spread of the virus, and the severe respiratory illness that it can cause.
The more sequencing that can be done to understand, identify and verify characteristics of the genetic makeup of both the virus itself and patients who contract it (both during and post-infection), the quicker everyone will be able to move on to potential treatments and immunotherapies.

How One Particular Coronavirus Myth Went Viral (Wired) Published on: March 19, 2020 | Category: Global Response

From an obscure Indian site to ZeroHedge to, well, everyone, here’s the trajectory of a fake story about Covid-19.
The article claimed that two Chinese spies smuggled the virus from a lab in Winnipeg to a military lab in Wuhan, where the virus “leaked” out and began infecting people.
The falsehood had gone viral before Canadian authorities became aware of it and were able to disprove it.
While two Chinese scientists were in fact escorted from the Winnipeg lab last July, a spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada later told the CBC that they were asked to leave due to an “administrative manner,” described by Canadian police as a “policy breach” that posed no danger to public safety.

Is It Time to Rethink Globalized Supply Chains? (MIT Sloan Management Review) Published on: March 19, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Leadership

The COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for managers and prompt them to consider actions that will improve their resilience to future shocks.
The transformation of supply chains to global multistage production networks took place in a benign environment of falling trade barriers and an implicit willingness to accept increasing interdependence and the associated risks.
Over the past decade, we have had a number of black swan events. Although such occurrences are supposed to be exceedingly rare, in the past decade we have had several of them: the introduction by China of export quotas on rare earth elements in 2010; the 2011 Tohōku East Japan earthquake and tsunami; the flooding in Thailand later that year; the U.S.-China trade war; and now the coronavirus contagion.

Which Country Has Flattened the Curve for the Coronavirus? (NY Times) Published on: March 19, 2020 | Category: Global Response

These charts track the number of new confirmed cases each day. Each red line is the seven-day moving average, which smooths out day-to-day anomalies in how the data are reported by authorities.
In the United States and five other countries, the number of known coronavirus cases is still growing rapidly. They have all reported more than 4,000 new cases in the past week.

Where Canada is falling short on its coronavirus communications (Maclean's) Published on: March 19, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business, Leadership

Some key lessons identified after SARS have not been followed, leading at times to sparse details and a patchwork system of basic information.
Uniformity in messaging has been tough, too—the premiers of Quebec and British Columbia have used their press conferences to needle Ottawa to take more drastic action to limit travel.

ECB to launch €750bn bond-buying programme (FT) Published on: March 19, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme will cover sovereign and corporate debt.
The ECB also decided to expand the range of assets eligible for purchase to non-financial commercial paper and to ease its collateral standards to allow banks to raise money against more of their assets, including corporate finance claims.
Another option for the ECB to repair market confidence would be to lift its self-imposed limits to not buy more than a third of the eligible sovereign bonds of any single country and to purchase sovereign bonds in proportion to the weight of each country’s investment in its capital.
The latest €750bn package comes on top of last week’s €120bn extra purchases and means the ECB will buy more than €1tn of bonds in the next nine months — its highest ever pace of purchases.

GM, Ford and FCA shutter all North American factories over coronavirus fears (TechCrunch) Published on: March 18, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

Detroit’s big three automakers are to shut down all factories due to fears over the coronavirus.
Over the last few days, United Auto Workers has been pushing the automakers to shut down their factories over concerns of worker safety.
Early today, Honda announced it was pausing all operations at its 12 North American factories, including transmission and engine plants in Ohio, Indiana, Alabama, Canada and Mexico. Ford and GM followed several hours later. Now, in the afternoon, FCA also decided to close its factories.

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