How To Prepare Your Business For The Contagion

With stock markets in steep decline, countries in quarantine, and cases of Covid-19 spreading rapidly around the globe, businesses have no option but to brace themselves for this raging pandemic.

- Samantha Steele

A pandemic on this scale will have a domino effect on society at large and experts anticipate hospitals struggling to cope with the volume of cases, social gatherings being banned outright, and ultimately workplaces disrupted in the wake of the contagious coronavirus.

For now (at the time of going to press), Africa as a whole has a relatively lower caseload and is better prepared than many nations to deal with a pandemic. Says Hendrik Scholtz, an expert in pandemic management who worked on MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) with a background in pathology and is currently General Manager at the worldwide headquarters of International SOS in Singapore, responsible for 1,200 medical doctors and 4,000 paramedics and nurses active in 92 countries globally: “The low numbers [in Africa] are a genuine reflection of the number of people infected and a testament to the rapid identification of cases. In certain parts of Africa, the public health system is very well prepared to deal with an epidemic, especially because of the Ebola outbreak. I have full confidence in the health system.”

There are broadly three ways businesses can prepare for a pandemic on this scale: increase the accessibility and standard of their hygiene practices and workplace hygiene compliance, enable social distancing through remote working to prevent the spread of the disease, and prepare for a high rate of absenteeism while ensuring leave and sick leave policies are in place.

Hygiene practices and compliance

It’s almost devastating in its simplicity: it’s the basic hygiene measures that will curb the spread of SARS-CoV-2, as the virus causing the current pandemic is named.