COVID-19 Monitor

Last Updated:October 15, 2020

Navigator Sight is an AI-powered news service for decision makers to stay abreast of the issues that matter most. As readers engage with a story, our machine learning algorithm improves. View updates here or sign up below to receive them in your inbox.

Get Notifications

Receive email updates. Subscribe now.

Browse:

Latest All Posts Topics

Canadian Business Economic Impact Global Response Leadership

Navigator Sight

Build your own monitor: Each Sight monitor can be customized to your organisation’s needs and continually improves through proprietary machine learning.

Get In Touch:

(416) 642-6440 info@navltd.com

All Posts

Racing to connect: How the federal IT agency kept public servants online during the pandemic (The Logic) Published on: August 17, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business

In the midst of arguably the biggest crisis since the Second World War, the apparatus of the federal government was going remote.
The COVID-19 buildout shows the new plan for Shared Services appears to be working. But not all public servants are back on the job yet, and the agency is still working to assuage longstanding concerns about internal morale and service levels.
Since the lockdown began, Ottawa’s IT agency has spent $60 million on new hardware, additional licences and other technology to more than double secure remote access capacity.

COVID-19: Saving thousands of lives and trillions in livelihoods (McKinsey) Published on: August 17, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

Our new research looking for visible indicators of economic activity that would suggest such a rebound in growth finds them only in the countries that have successfully placed the virus under control.
The evidence heavily suggests that a multifaceted public-health response that goes well beyond a simple transient lockdown is a necessary first step to restore confidence and create the conditions for growth.
The impact of delay is not linear. For every three months we delay in getting the virus under control, we push back the return of GDP to precrisis levels by about six months. Time is the enemy of both lives and livelihoods.

Guangzhou bans frozen meat imports over virus fears (FT) Published on: August 17, 2020 | Category: Global Response

The capital of China’s southern Guangdong province has suspended imports of frozen meat, fish and seafood from coronavirus-hit countries, as Beijing intensifies scrutiny of refrigerated food as a possible carrier of the disease.
The Brazilian government rejected the claims, pointing out that World Health Organization experts had said there was no evidence that frozen food or its packaging were a risk factor in spreading the virus.
Guangdong has launched a testing drive spanning the whole supply chain of a groceries and restaurant chain backed by technology company Alibaba, after one of its employees in Shenzhen was found to be infected.

Yale’s COVID-19 saliva test used in NBA gets FDA emergency approval (Today) Published on: August 17, 2020 | Category: Global Response

The test, known as SalivaDirect, “is simpler, less expensive, and less invasive than the traditional method for such testing,” Yale said in a news release Saturday.
SalivaDirect doesn’t rely on proprietary technology, and Yale researchers don’t intend to commercialize it, the university said.
The researchers will provide protocols to other diagnostic laboratories that could use commercially available equipment to conduct the test, the agency said.

First into the virus slump, China is proving the fastest out (Japan Times) Published on: August 16, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

China’s economy, the first to succumb to the coronavirus, is proving to be the fastest to recover.
An industry-powered rebound is pushing the Asian nation out of the historic first-quarter slump and toward the prospect of being the only major economy to expand this year. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg forecast growth of 2.0 percent.
The reasons for China’s performance so far range from a populace willing to accept and implement strict virus control measures to the fact that the world still needs its exports. Sales abroad jumped in July as factories and retailers elsewhere re-opened.

You May Not Know This Pandemic Winner, but Your Tween Probably Does (NY Times) Published on: August 16, 2020 | Category: Global Response

Millions of children have flocked to the online gaming site Roblox since March. That’s helping game developers, some as young as 16, make a lot of money.
Since February, the number of active players on Roblox has jumped about 35 percent to reach 164 million in July, according to RTrack, a site that tracks Roblox data.
About three quarters of American children ages 9 to 12 are now on the platform, according to Roblox. And players spent 3 billion hours on the site and app in July, twice as much as they did in February, the company said.

Home Depot Braced for Covid Pain—Then Americans Remodeled (WSJ) Published on: August 16, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact

After lobbying to be open, the big box scrambled to meet demand. Old benchmarks don’t apply, says CEO Craig Menear: ‘None of that has a correlation anymore.’
Americans, stuck at home without much to do, started painting, building, fixing and decorating. Government stimulus checks buoyed long-delayed home improvements, as did less money spent on restaurants and summer travel.
Daily foot traffic to Home Depot stores since April has been running at least 35% above last year’s, according to Unacast Inc., which tracks location data from 25 million cellphones on any given day. In 26 states, traffic doubled following a surge in late May.

‘Neglected’ school ventilation systems worry parents, experts during COVID-19 pandemic (CBC) Published on: August 16, 2020 | Category: Canadian Business

Ventilation is key to helping quell COVID-19, and schools across Canada should move away from the current piecemeal approach to indoor air, public health and engineering experts say.
Schools can be poorly ventilated, crowded spaces where people spend much of the day in close contact — all factors that can make them high-risk settings and that public health officials say can facilitate outbreaks as a new school year is set to begin.
The findings suggest physical distancing on it own indoors is inadequate to prevent inhalation of infectious respiratory secretions in poorly ventilated classrooms, said Dr. Anne Huang, a public health physician in Regina.

‘New York City Lite’: after coronavirus, will business flock to the suburbs? (FT) Published on: August 16, 2020 | Category: Economic Impact, Global Response

As the pandemic prompts a migration from cities, companies are debating whether to follow the people.
The past 20 years has been a golden age of great cities such as New York and London. As talented young workers migrated to such hubs, companies followed, attracting more talent in turn.
If more and more workers flock to the suburbs, this raises the question of whether companies will also follow. One of the revelations of the coronavirus pandemic has been how communications technology has allowed so many people to work from home without much of a hitch.

The COVID-19 learning cliff (Axios) Published on: August 15, 2020 | Category: Global Response

Perhaps the most jarring reality of the COVID-19 pandemic for families has been the sudden and dramatic disruption to all levels of education, which is expected to have deep social and economic repercussions for years — if not decades — to come.
A clear trend emerged from decades of studies on summer slide: students from lower-income families are more likely to fall behind than students who live in higher-income homes, RAND’s Jennifer McCombs told Harvard EdCast in March.
In math, students were likely to return with less than 50% of the previous school year’s learning gains, and in some grades nearly a whole year behind what would be expected under normal circumstances.

Newer Posts Older Posts