| Abstrakt: |
The global atmosphere in the mid-year 2019 was more of anxiety and frustrations about the impact of a US–China trade war, Brexit outcomes, oil price fluctuations and even the upcoming US election 2020 on the global economy. The unexpected emergence of a novel coronavirus in the Hubie province of China and now pandemic immediately shifted focus and its impacts are visible globally. The major objective of this study has been to discover the impacts of the COVID-19 containment strategies as the policy of many countries and the mitigation measures on the global economy. Three months of data within February and May which comprises Africa, Asia, North America and Europe, the FTSE 500 index (UK), SP 500 (US), the Nikkei 225 (Japan) and the South Africa top 40 index as well as LD, MR, TR, MP, CC variables were drawn from the Statista review, Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker, where the multivariate model was applied including the use of SPSS version 26 with the correlation result. The result indicates the containment policies such as travel restrictions and lockdowns introduced by various countries have negative impacts on the global economy but helped in reducing the spread of the virus. However, the mitigation measures such as insurance policy for health workers and the stimulus funds for the MSMEs including packages to reduce hardship associated with current unemployment positively impacted the economy. Resurfacing of a virus strong as COVID-19 or much infectious than this in future is possible and as countries were caught unprepared which has heavily disrupted major health care system and the global economy in general, it is recommendable that cross-country policies such as directing more investment into the health sector and review of the unemployment packages to include all will be in the right direction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
