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Pandemic outbreak overtakes Business Interruption as top business risk in China:Allianz Risk Barometer 2021:
In response to heightened BI vulnerabilities, many companies are aiming to build more resilient operations and to de-risk their supply chains.
According to Allianz Risk Barometer respondents, improving business continuity management is the main action companies are taking (62%), followed by developing alternative or multiple suppliers (45%), investing in digital supply chains (32%) and improved supplier selection and auditing (31%).
Covid may take four to five years to end; uncertainties to remain: Singapore Minister
“At some point of time the pandemic will pass, but it may take four to five years before we finally see the end of the pandemic and the start of a post-Covid normal. What will this new post-COVID world look like? No one can tell,” Singapore’s Education Minister Lawrence Wong said.
Global Covid-19 cases surpass 100 million, as US seeks to reset its Covid fight
The widening gap for vaccine supplies between rich and poor countries led both South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to lash out at “vaccine nationalism.”
Ramaphosa told the WEF that low- and middle-income countries were being shouldered aside by wealthier nations able to acquire “up to four times what their population needs.”
World on verge of defeating pandemic, says Harsh Vardhan at WHO meet
“In the present context, nowhere is safe until everywhere is safe. At the WHO, we have ensured that the low and middle-income countries have access to safe and effective Covid-19 tests, treatment and vaccine.”
Over the post-Covid world, he said, “The post-Covid world will be filled with challenges. To overcome them, WHO needs to be a trailblazer, empowered to work towards a new vision that allows it to realise its full potential and strengthen health care systems across member nations.”
Programmes tackling extreme poverty reach nearly 92 mln people
Currently an estimated 700 million people live in extreme poverty, meaning surviving on less than US$1.90 a day. “One of the most stubborn challenges we face in development is positively transforming the lives of the extreme poor and vulnerable – a problem exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” Mari Pangestu, the World Bank’s managing director for Development Policy and Partnerships, said in a statement.
IMF lifts global growth forecast for 2021, still sees ‘exceptional uncertainty’
But it warned that the world economy continued to face “exceptional uncertainty” and new waves of COVID-19 infections and variants posed risks, and global activity would remain well below pre-COVID-19 projections made one year ago. IMF chief economist Gita Gopinath said U.S. President Joe Biden’s pledge to fund the World Health Organization’s COVAX vaccine initiative marked “a very big step” to containing the pandemic and ensuring more equitable distribution of vaccines.
“Much more will be needed, because as we can see, given the mutating virus, that this is not a problem that’s going away anytime soon,” Gopinath told a news conference. “There is still a tremendous amount of uncertainty,” she told Reuters in a separate interview. “We know that the health crisis is not over until it’s over everywhere.”
Brazil’s Bolsonaro gives nod to private sector buying COVID-19 shots, AstraZeneca balks
AstraZeneca, however, said in a statement on Tuesday that all of its vaccine supply “at this moment” is only available to governments and multilateral organizations around the world. “It is not possible to make vaccines available to the private sector,” it said. Several companies denied reports that they had joined the initiative, including hospital group DASA SA, which said in a statement it is seeking to understand the commercial availability of vaccines through its suppliers.
Climate change drives $268 bn global damage from 2020 natural disasters with 64% uninsured:Aon report
“When Natural Disasters and a Pandemic Collide” global annual report explores “connected extremes”
Asia recorded $95 billion in economic damage from natural disasters in 2020. Just 9% was insured; which means the protection gap was 91% further highlighting protection gap vulnerabilities in 2020
Job losses from virus four times as bad as 2009 global financial crisis: UN
“This has been the most severe crisis for the world of work since The Great Depression of the 1930s. Its impact is far greater than that of the global financial crisis of 2009,” said ILO Director-General Guy Ryder.
Covid-19: Unemployed supertankers are about to get junked on Asia’s beaches
While the vessel glut has really been in place since when Covid-19 caused oil demand to collapse early last year, it has until recently been masked by a huge chunk of the fleet storing crude that was previously surplus to requirements
The scrapping may not be enough to save the market in the coming months. The amount of oil being shipped at sea remains far below normal levels as OPEC and its allies continue to withhold huge volumes of production and vessels that were used as storage during the oil market’s mammoth 2020 glut are now coming back onto the market and looking for business.