The World Is Preparing for Higher Global Virus Spread Risk
The declining new infected coronavirus cases in China raise prospect that the disease is getting contained in the country, but the virus is rapidly spreading globally. Beyond China’s borders, the virus has spread to 53 countries across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas, killing at least 86 people by Feb. 29. South Korea is the largest outbreak outside of China. A church that has become one of the epidemic’s hot zones has an estimated 210,000 members. New cases are soaring in Italy and Iran, two of the biggest outbreaks. Several countries registered new infections that illustrated the diverse ways the pathogen could cross borders.
Last month, the WHO declared the outbreak a global health emergency. The quick advance has raised fears that a pandemic could be on the horizon. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the WHO, said the decision whether to use the word “pandemic” was based on “an ongoing assessment” of the geographical spread of the virus, the severity of its effects and its impact on society. So far, health officials have not witnessed “the uncontained global spread” of the virus, or evidence of “large-scale severe disease or death” and “widespread community transmission.”
The PBOC Sets Up 300 Billion Yuan Fund to Help Key Enterprises
On January 31, the People’s Bank of China issued a document and decided to set up a special fund of 300 billion yuan for refinancing. Financial institutions are supposed to use the fund to provide preferential interest rate loans to support the enterprises which are essential in the fight against the ongoing epidemic.
According to the list of key enterprises, the special re-loan issuing banks took the initiative to send “rescue line” money to the enterprises. Caijing found that many banks only took 48 hours from the approval of loan application by enterprises to the arrival of funds. What’s more, some banks took only 5 hours to complete the disbursement. This is an unprecedented test for bankers who deal with the refinancing. Some bankers have bluntly stated that the scope and intensity of support will continue to expand, and more small, medium and micro enterprises will benefit in the future. However, from the perspective of banks, supervision should also introduce relevant measures to give institutions more incentives to serve small, medium and micro enterprises.
The Epidemic Will Not Have Long-term Impact on the Global Supply Chain
As the novel coronavirus epidemic affects the production of parts of some manufacturing companies, it has caused some multinational companies to suspend their production. But the virus outbreak will not have a measurable long-term impact on global supply chains. China’s 30-year-old supply chain cannot be completely replaced in the short term.
But as a “world factory”, its supply chain has global significance. The impact of this epidemic on China’s economy and enterprises has gradually spread to various industries around the world, such as the electronics industry and the auto industry. In fact, under the successive impact of the Sino-US trade disputes and the novel coronavirus epidemic, the long-term stability of China’s manufacturing supply chain system has also caused concern, and some companies have begun to rethink about the shortcomings of the supply chain arrangement.
High-cost Infectious Disease Surveillance System Failed in the Early Stage of the Epidemic
Many medical experts reviewed the lessons gained in the early work of the novel coronavirus outbreak. They mentioned that after the SARS epidemic in 2003, the online direct reporting system of infectious diseases that the central and local governments spent heavily on was not fully effective. On January 24, 2020, the second day after Wuhan’s “lock down”, the CCDC launched the dynamic surveillance function of the disease. This new feature is based on the National Infectious Diseases and Public Health Emergencies Surveillance Information System established by the central and local governments at a cost of approximately 730 million yuan after the SARS epidemic in 2003.
But before the new function was optimized on January 24, the network was not utilized. Even in the epidemic center, Wuhan, most of the medical personnel reported the epidemic situation verbally. A number of clinicians told the reporter from Caijing that the use of the reporting system was very complex, and many doctors did not know how to operate it.
