– Impact not related to air travel –
For the transport sector, the two-year pandemic has been a series of uncertainties, hopes for recovery, travel restrictions and cancellations. Gradually and with the introduction of certain rules, such as the mandatory use of a mask or the presentation of a health passport at the European level, most travel has become possible to resume.
However, transport companies have lost billions of euros over this period, and trains and airplanes are not expected to return to normal until 2024.
Air transport suffered the most, with two-thirds fewer flights globally in 2020, and less than half by the end of 2021 compared to 2019.
The sector was hit hard by border closures in much of Asia and until early November in the United States. Companies were better resisted by national or interregional flights, which accounted for 79% of pre-pandemic traffic, compared with 34% of intercontinental flights.
In the long term, however, the industry is optimistic, as the order books for Airbus or Boeing show. Airlines are confident that the Asian middle class will grow to 10 billion passengers a year by 2050, up from 4,400 in 2019.
In cities, on the one hand, the number of users of public transport has dropped sharply due to fears of infection. On the other hand, there has been an increase in the use of bicycles and car returns.
– Explosion of Online Trading –
COVID-19 and related restrictions and business closings have accelerated the development of online commerce.
According to the French Federation of Online Commerce, eMarketer estimates that most products and services purchased online (excluding travel, culture, restaurants or gambling) fell from 13.6% in 2019 to 18% of total sales. … World.
Is it just a young shopper phenomenon?
“We’ve seen new, older customers emerge and become loyal,” said Gaelle Le Flock, Sales Specialist for Kantar.
And even in less online-friendly categories such as hygiene and beauty, brands have adapted to offer online tasters and invest in “technical beauty.”
And with the gradual transfer of social life to the Internet in 2021, $ 492 billion in sales was generated via social media, as happened with brands that mix in Instagram Stories, according to consultancy Accenture.
And it looks like nothing can stop this trend, which Amazon is enjoying a huge advantage with impressive financial results. This prompted all of its competitors to go online, so that in France, sales of the American giant in 2020 grew less than the market as a whole.
– Peak remote work –
The COVID-19 crisis has revolutionized our work, making telecommuting widespread, albeit unevenly, between rich countries and the rest of the world.
Research firm Gartner predicts that teleworkers accounted for 32% of the global workforce at the end of 2021, up from 17% in 2019. In Japan, for example, the proportion of people working remotely rose from 10% to 28%.
According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “most companies and people expect to be able to do ‘remote work’ more often,” especially the most skilled.
– School at variable speed –
For UNESCO, the riots caused by the COVID-19 pandemic around the world represented the worst education crisis in history. Faced with the pandemic, most countries have closed their colleges and higher education centers for more or less lengthy periods.
The consequences were dire.
In low- and middle-income countries, the percentage of minors affected by educational poverty (53% before the pandemic) may now be as high as 70%. The regions of Brazil, Pakistan, rural India, South Africa and Mexico (among other countries) are experiencing significant losses in math teaching and reading.
UN agencies and the World Bank have warned that the generation of young people now in school are at risk of losing about $ 17 billion in income from shortfalls resulting from school closings due to the pandemic, higher than originally thought.
– Hunger is growing in the world –
The coronavirus pandemic will have a long-term impact on global food security, causing a sharp rise in the number of hungry people in 2020, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), a United Nations specialized agency, said.
This growth (18% in 2021 a year), the most important in the past 15 years, threatens more than ever the UN goal of ending world hunger by 2030.
According to the latest report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), COVID-19 has put 20 million people in extreme poverty in 2021.
It has also plunged many health systems into chaos, leading to the fight against other diseases such as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria. This year, 23 million children have failed to receive core vaccines.
