The year 2020 started with quite unpleasant news for the whole world. The COVID-19 epidemic that started in China did not seem to cause trouble but it began to spread rapidly outside the country, reaching Europe and the United States of America. At the moment, the World Health Organization has declared a pandemic, and the number of infected people around the world has reached 700,000. Due to the current situation borders have been closed in many countries of the world, quarantine has been declared, people are stocking up on food and do not leave their homes.

As a result of the events described above, the entire world has already begun to experience an economic crisis. Many areas of business suffer huge losses due to the suspension of all working activity. Airlines companies suffer the most in this situation, since most flights around the world are canceled or postponed indefinitely; the tourism sector has become irrelevant at the moment, as well as the services sector, catering, and mass events organization. At the moment, everyone has an equal position, and each of us has the same goal: to contribute to improving the situation and do all we can, not to panic, follow all the recommendations because the faster we defeat the Coronavirus, the faster the situation in the world will stabilize.

How has the coronavirus affected the IT industry?

No doubt, the unstable situation in the world has also affected the IT sector, but it is worth noting that the IT sector has accepted all changes in relation to other organizations, including state-owned ones, as loyally as possible. A huge number of companies in different parts of the world have moved their employees to remote work, and even those who have never used this method in practice have started doing it. In this situation, IT specialists are more flexible, since many of them usually work from home and don’t experience stress while changing their workplace.

How can IT sphere affect the coronavirus?

As it is already known, the European Parliament approved the measures proposed by the European Commission to combat the new coronavirus epidemic. In particular, they provide for the allocation of € 37 billion to protect the European economy from the consequences of the spread of the disease. At present it is not known yet what exactly this money will be spent on.

We can assume that, first of all, a large amount of money will be allocated to the medical field for research and development of a Coronavirus vaccine, as well as to help doctors, patients, to purchase necessary medicines and equipment, etc. We cannot exclude the fact that a certain amount of money will be allocated to IT sector and to startups’ support, because IT specialists can take part in the fight against the pandemic directly. They can assist doctors and scientists in preparing the vaccine being responsible for the technical part of the issue, and they can also program special medical equipment, implementing advanced technologies into medicine.

Programmers can also work on creating special applications or online platforms for tracking or detecting the virus. Moreover, they can create special online platforms for holding collective classes and conferences, thus helping other companies to get through a difficult time and organizing new work platforms for them.

Since a huge number of people are isolated, they do not leave their homes, do not visit public places, in this case, IT specialists can help people in quarantine, creating or modernizing the online shopping system, because now this service has become the most relevant.

Finally, since the unstable situation in the world has the least impact on the work of the IT sector, large companies can provide some financial support for the fight against coronavirus, that can be an invaluable contribution to our common bright future.

This stressful situation gives us food for reflection: it’s high time for each of us to think about our life values and priorities, to look at life and the world around us from a different perspective, and for many businessmen now is the right time to think about the future development of their companies and the possibility of introducing more advanced technologies, switching to a modern advanced format of running business and alternative development options in case of global changes.

Be careful and stay healthy!