Is it too early to start thinking about how this whole pandemic thing will end?

It is a sad reality that over 20million people globally are now infected with the coronavirus with over 780,000 deaths as a result of the pandemic – and the numbers are still rising, even as I pen these notes. The economic impact has been severe and more so in developing countries where social safety nets are almost non-existent and the economy is largely informal in nature.

However, I must confess that I really miss the old normal – the impromptu chats with teammates, having those engaging discussions with neighbors, facilitating high-intensity teambuilding sessions, observing how leaders and teams engage deeply on issues that affect their effectiveness in very passionate ways.

According to a recent BBC Africa’s projection, even though scientists are not quite sure about how pandemics end, there are a few pointers that businesses can look at, as signals for restoration of normalcy in the coming weeks.

In this article, you can find pointers to how this will end, or maybe it is ending already in some places. One thing is clear though, different countries will arrive at this anticipated destination at different times owing to the level of effectiveness of the containment measures they are able to put in place.

1. Scenario 1: Better containment by more countries and transmission rates start to decrease significantly after the covid-19 virus runs out of susceptible people it can infect.
2. Scenario 2: The world simply gets used to the virus and moves on. In this case, we start to treat the virus as the normal influenza viruses and take it on in a busines as usual fashion. Social distancing, use of face masks and periodic lockdowns in small spike areas will be the norm.
3. Scenario 3: An effective vaccine is developed and global vaccination ends the virus spread and eventually may be eliminated eventually.

In the final analysis, there is no definitive answer to that most pressing question of when and how the pandemic will end. In the interim, business need to put in place covid-secure strategies for ensuring business continuity and resilience.

By Akin Oke