Business Unusual – Personal Insights into the Global Impact of Coronavirus Outbreak
Like many companies, DMA Media – the owner of thenewsmarket.com – has offices and employees around the world. From Milan to Munich, from Ahmedabad to Brussels, all of our staff members have been impacted by the coronavirus in a host of different ways. What we do know is, over the last few weeks, it’s certainly not been business as usual for us and our clients.
Italy is Europe’s worst hit country. With a rapidly rising number of cases, the government has imposed a variety of emergency measures to control the outbreak. It’s decided to close all of Italy's schools and universities until the middle of March. It’s also ordered all big sporting events to be played behind closed doors because of the virus emergency.
Claudia Bucello is DMA’s Senior Account Manager. She is based in Milan in the region of Lombardy, which is in the yellow zone, meaning at risk, but not as much as the quarantined red zones. Over the past two weeks, all schools, theatres, museums, cinemas, gyms etc. have been closed.
Claudia offered her personal insight into the situation in Milan. “People are staying mainly indoors. Although, at the weekend, restaurants are still quite busy. The atmosphere around is a bit tense – but there are no empty supermarkets as the news has reported. To that end everything is pretty normal.”
She added: “Most companies have asked employees to work from home. Most companies have also cancelled all business trips. I myself have cancelled my visit to a client. Businesses will be highly affected by this, for sure.”
Reaction from around the world…
Over in the U.S. so far, the main impact has been the cancellation of events and companies starting to issue ‘no travel’ orders to their employees.
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