Coronavirus impacts outlined

The coronavirus pandemic is grabbing everyone’s attention, causing anxiety and panic for many. The National this week invited Institute of National Affairs executive director Paul Barker to share his views on the impact of the pandemic on the lives of people and the national economy. Here is what he said:

Unlike Sars (severe acute respiratory syndrome), which seemed to have a much higher mortality rate, but a low transmission rate, Covid-19 is a highly transmissible virus, notably by way of touching infected surfaces.
So presumably, the question is when it will arrive, rather than whether.

The first aim is clearly to try and prevent or at least defer the arrival of the virus as long as possible, to enable awareness and preparedness to be built up and for Papua New Guinea’s already weak and overburdened health system to be reinforced and focussed on addressing the new challenge.
As an island nation, or rather, half an island and a series of smaller islands, Papua New Guinea has a greater capacity to hold off the virus than most countries, but there are still many avenues for it to arrive here, if they’re not being tightly watched and controlled, which is tough considering Papua New Guinea’s size.
Deferring its arrival and then controlling its dissemination through the community, as far as possible, provides time and is also designed to help extend the impact, so that there’s not a major surge in the demand for limited health service intervention, and also, with luck, to provide more opportunity for a vaccine to be developed in one of dozens of laboratories around the world that are focussing on this major public health challenge.
When it arrives, it will place a major burden on health services and the economy.
It will also require and cause major shifts in social behaviour to limit opportunities of dispersion and to better protect, particularly the most vulnerable in the community.
Unfortunately, there’s some trade-off between the economy and human health.
Normally, improved economic conditions would coincide with improved health and welfare, so long as there is reasonably equitable distribution of the national income of that country, including though taxation and social protection arrangements.
However, when tackling a major virus like Covid-19, the more one wishes to impede its dispersion then the more one disrupts the economy and even the social and cultural life of that society.
Halting air transport, hotels, catering and the tourist industry, including cruise liners, sports, theatres and other arts and recreational activities, shops and offices, clearly costs jobs and forces businesses to close if extended for any period.

The airline industry is suggesting that all the world’s airlines, large or small, would be technically bankrupt by the end of May if the current global situation prevails.
It is important to make responses to diseases well targeted and to avoid the cure being worse than the problem.
Tough action in the shorter term seems capable of reducing the longer term health and economic impact, perhaps allowing earlier economic recovery, at least in disciplined and more developed economies like South Korea, where health and institutional capacity is relatively strong.
The concern is that in developing countries such as Papua New Guinea, the capacity to restrain or control the virus once here is more limited, and access to water supply, sanitation and hygiene remains severely limited in villages, settlements, households and market places across the nation.
Likewise, the strategy of home quarantine or just staying home or working from home is unrealistic for much of the community, where household numbers are large and formal or informal livelihoods are from producing or trading food, cash crops or other goods.
There’s no capacity to stay at home and be allocated temporary relief by the State, as there is no social protection scheme (i.e unemployment or other welfare benefits, or even current details of household whereabouts or numbers).
Relative remoteness helped PNG in the face of the global financial crisis, but once the virus is here, only those communities maintaining no contact with the rest of the country could expect to be largely safeguarded, but then these villages are also not engaged in the modern or trading economy (except perhaps by mobile phone now).
For most of the rest of the country, it will remain critical for people to be able to continue with agricultural and other economic activities and critical that shipping continues to be able to both export products and ship food and other products between domestic ports and import other food, health and other products from overseas.
The capacity of the Government to undertake an economic stimulus package to sustain business or revive business, before or after an extended shutdown, is severely restrained, particularly after several years of poor economic performance and a budget deficit every year since 2012.
Nevertheless, the Government would be aiming to provide funding to meet the Health Department’s immediate needs, as well as provide some budget support and assistance to the economy, including from the World Bank.
The International Monetary Fund has recently announced a global assistance facility.