Companies bet on technology and logistics to cross Covid-19

Covid-19 pandemic significantly impacted the global economy. Many people have lost their jobs and many companies have closed.

Coronavirus has pushed over 60 million people to extreme poverty worldwide, according to World Bank data.

The portion of people living less than $ 2.15 a day rose from 9.05% to almost 10% in 2020.

To try to reduce the economic impact of the pandemic on the population, governments from various countries have adopted emergency aid. The United States spent 11% of GDP on social programs during pandemic, the highest percentage between high -income economies, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the so -called Rich Countries Club. And that was a strong stimulus to demand.

“We had the manufacturing capacity impaired by this disease. And the basics of the economy is that if you don’t have enough offer and there is enough demand then prices go up. And that’s basically what happened. And I think we’re still feeling some of the impacts of it, ”says Mark Hamrick, Senior Bankrate economist.

Inflation reached a 9% peak in the United States in 2022, the largest level in 40 years. And since then, it has not returned to 2% of the US Central Bank.

In Brazil, a study by the International Monetary Fund (FM) I, revealed that government assistance measures during the pandemic reached 4% of GDP. But according to the fund, a 50% lower cost social program would be enough to protect the population.

The basic interest rate in Brazil is 13.25%, the highest level since August 2023. And inflation in February has reached the highest level in 22 years.

Amid the worsening of the economy, the business also suffered and 500,000 Brazilian companies closed their doors only by 2020.

“The companies really had to be very agile, they had to change very fast. And this speed and change in dealing with the pandemic, in the best organization, I think, is still there, and really helped create new innovations for the future, ”says Stephan Meier, Management Specialist at Columbia University.

Jupira Lee, owner of a Brazilian restaurant in New York, recalls how was the start of the pandemic in 2020. “The day the city closed was March 16, which is my birthday,” she says to CNN Brazil .

With the restaurant opened since 1998, the businesswoman sought alternatives to cross the period. She reinforced the delivery scheme, started selling frozen dishes and sought permission to adopt shedsthe balconies that became famous in the pandemic.

“Everyone thought about what they could think. Because, either it was to do that, or it was to close, ”he says.

Innovation advance was mainly seen in sectors such as digital commerce and transport.

At DHL, the logistics company, the e-commerce area more than doubled during the pandemic.

“In the United States, from the second quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2020, we saw a 60% increase in volume year by year among these quarters within the e -commerce sector. And then this volume explosion needed to be treated, ”says Kraig Foreman, president of e-commerce at DHL Supply Chain, CNN .

In Brazil, online orders also exploded during the pandemic. The delivery service expanded in addition to restaurants and now encompasses supermarkets, pharmacies and even petshops.

“This behavior of demand was sustained and continued to grow in postpandeia. So what perhaps the pandemic brought was an intensity, almost anticipating a trend that was already from the market for the growth of the adoption of online delivery, the general e-commerce in Brazil, ”says Roberto Gandolfo, IFood Marketplace CEO.

The pandemic accelerated processes in Brazil and the world as a whole.

Throughout the series “How Covid changed the world”, the CNN Brazil It also addresses the impacts of the COVID-19 vaccine race on the treatment of diseases such as cancer and the brands of the disease that has lasted today, five years later.

Long covid: Study relates inflammation and neuropsychiatric symptoms

This content was originally published in companies bet on technology and logistics to cross Covid-19 on the CNN Brazil website.

Source: CNN Brasil