Global Shock in Economic Activities: COVID-19 Pandemonium


 The sudden outbreak of corona virus disease (COVID-19) all over the globe has continued to spread like a wild fire. The confirmed number of deaths was about 3, 400 as of March 7, 2020 but an exponential death increase has been recorded with the number of deaths jumping to a height of about 13,550 on March 22, 2020. The alarming level of spread poses challenge to leaders, economist and policy makers in the world and have distrust global workforce. The global economic implication of the pandemic has become detrimental to human, health, social, political and economic activities, among others which has resulted to global economic shock. Hence, countries have become nationalized and politics becoming nationalistic. Among suggested policy measure include: reduction of interest rates as low as the 2009 subprime crisis percentage point just to encourage investment and recovery in global activities, International health organizations should intensifying surveillance, outbreak readiness, biomedical counter-measures as preventive measures, massive education and enlightenment about the virus using all local dilates , its mode of transmission, and its health and socio-economic effects on the household and economy at large. For an effective implementation of these policy solution, maximum support is needed from all the stakeholders such as the governments, non-governmental organizations, health professionals, the media, communities, and the individuals at large.


Introduction
The sudden outbreak of corona virus disease  all over the globe has continued to spread like a wild fire. As the confirmed number of deaths strike about 3, 400 as at March 7, 2020 (Olaniyi, 2020). An exponential growth increase in death was experienced, with the number of deaths jumping to a height of about 13,550 on March 22, 2020. The alarming level of spread poses challenge to leaders, economist and policy makers in the world and have distrust global workforce. This novel pneumonia illness first breakout in the province of Hubei in Wuhan, China, at the tail end of December 2019 (Brussow, 2020;Fauci, Lanre & Redfield, 2020;Gentile & Abenavoli, 2020, Shang, Yang, Rao &Rao, 2020, spreading from person to person, attacking the lungs and the bronchial tubes. The ailment has resisted all known treatment, hence ravaging lives of mostly people within the workforce age group of 15-44 years and children been less infected, the speed of the transition is an estimated 5-6 days (World Health Organization [WHO], 2020a).
In the light of the foregoing, the way of living has changed globally as government around the world have begun to take drastic measure to curb the virus from spreading further. Consequently, the spread of the COVID-19 has killed nearly 13,550 people with over 316,544 infected and 95,051 recovered globally as of 22nd March, 2020 (Scooper, 2020). According to statistics from respective countries and regions, the seven most hit countries in the world include: China, Italy. Spain, US, Germany, Iran, France (Scooper, 2020 More so, nations have resolved to impose travel bans, export and import ban, restriction on border crossing, close down of schools, sporting events cancelled, large gathering prohibition and banning of all international passengers' flights.
Furthermore, the spread of the novel pneumonia illness has prompted governments all over the globe to take measure without anyone remembering the state of the global economy. Hence, the first priority is clear to keep people as safe as possible. However, this has wrecked the global economic activities and brought about economic downturn in all economies of the world as all transactions remain on hold, oil price dropped due to drastic fall in the demand triggered by near-zero economic activities. The main focus and concern of nations globally is to secure the health and lives of the people, as health is key for a prosperous productive society. Therefore, it is pertinent to note that if drastic measures are not taken in time to curtail the spread of the virus most countries are going into recession while other more vulnerable nations would slump into depression.
This becomes expedient giving the fact that, the importance of sorting for concrete measures to contain the spread of COVID virus and the effect on economic impacts has been carefully highlighted by a growing body of literature within the same period (Andayi, Chaves & Widdowson, 2019; shed more light into the pandemic, they have failed to unveil the global market shock of COVID virus. This avail us the opportunity to fill the most recent gap in the literature and draw policy solutions that will help households and businesses.

Stylized Fact
For a better understanding of the issues of context, we employ the use of table for better illustration of the reported cases of COVID-19 globally. Tables 1 and 2, below shows the statistics of the COVID-19 case in Africa and globally as of 22nd March 2020. The statistic below shows that the virus has find its way into 44 countries in Africa with 1269 confirmed case, 72 recovered and 39 deaths. While statistic from the global case shows 315882 confirmed cases, 95039 recovered and 13558 deaths as at the same date. The human cost of the pandemic has continued to rise in an alarming rate and the virus is spreading across more countries.    The specter of this global slump was raised by international institutions due to the novel COVID-19 pandemic issue which has resulted to global panic, resentment and close down of economic activates. This is likely going to bring about recession in some countries and depress the global annual growth to below 2.5% this year (United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), 2020).
According to the report by UNCTAD, 2020 the recessionary threshold for the global economy is below 2.5% and the economic "shock" as a result of COVID-19 could likely cost the world to loss income up to $1trn. In the light of the above, the pandemic has brought about drop in the demand for travelling, ban of importation and exportation of goods and services which has in turn crashed the global oil price. Also, drop in consumer demand and fall in price has further triggered ripple effect that could potentially outlast direct disruption of the global economy.
The drastic measures taken so far to halt the spread of the virus has affected both demand and supply negatively, hence, this has started to ripple through the economy as sales of different good has been on the decline. The shock in supply has an adverse effect on the economy as countries will not be able to stimulate their economy due to drop in share price. Hence, the direct reduction in the supply of labor from unwell workers affect the global supply chain. On another hand, the fear of contagion, heightened uncertainty and loss of income is making people spend less and firms have reduced spending on investment due to low demand. For example, manufacturing and service sector activities in most countries have declined in March, the decline in service sector is getting deeper due to the large impact of social distancing; hence, making the drop in the manufacturing activities worse than the period of the global financial crisis (IMF,2020). Therefore, whether demand or supply shock, they both lead to global market shock. Consequently, the synchronization of the effect of these shock across countries can be amplified through international trade and financial linkages which will dampen global activity and push prices of commodity down.
This breakout has more implications on

Conclusion
Statistics from recent published data indicate that the world have recorded a substantive decline in output and trade transactions because of lockdown and drastic cut in investments (UNCTAD, 2020).
Amidst continuing rise in the number of infections and deaths across the globe (Brussow, 2020), most production outfits are pessimistic that measures fashioned out to contain the COVID-19 could further militate against the supply of critical raw materials, hence, negating economic progress both at the origin and recipient countries. It is based on this established premise that stakeholders are forecasting economic recession, with the developing and emerging economies being the most vulnerable (Ayittey et al., 2020). Therefore, even if the dreadful COVID-19 outbreak is contained in the coming weeks or months, its ripple effects cannot be estimated. Second, the expected negative spillover effects in countries specialized in exporting manufacturing inputs caused by disruptions in supply will be diverse across countries and geographic locations (Ayittey et al., 2020). Third, sectors such as tourism and travel-related industries, transportation, international film markets, entertainment giants, hotels and sports are the worst-hit. In addition, with the increasing lock-down, the spread of COVID-19 to developing countries in Africa accompanied with the existing price-wars between Russia and Saudi-Arabia; oil-price shocks would continue to deepen. However, with the perceived recovery and reverse in the spread of the Massive education and enlightenment about the virus, its mode of transmission, health and socioeconomic effects on the household and economy at large. Here, the use of digital and electronic media cannot be over-emphasized. This is because mass education through the digital means is fast, relatively cheap and covers a wide range. More importantly, a high percentage of the citizens are already captured on one or more of the social networks. Hence, this will ameliorate the rate at which the virus spreads and as such reduce the effects of the pandemic.
There should be public-private partnerships especially in the areas of funding, research, advocacy, cost-sharing strategies for disease prevention, preparedness and intervention (Olaniyi, 2020), enforcement of stay-at-home measures, strict screening of inter-state travelers and outright ban on international travels.
Lastly, International health organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO) should endeavor to lead the way in the area of intensifying surveillance, outbreak readiness, biomedical counter-measures and financing of new projects through government agencies, private organizations, non-government organizations (NGOs) and international agencies.

Availability of data and materials
The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available in the Scooper News Database repository, https://www.scoopernews.com/