The ‘Real’ Wolf of Wall Street- COVID-19’s Impact on Healthcare Systems and Global Economies

Abstract

Background: Globally, over 7.8 million people have contracted COVID-19 and > 430,000 have died. The outbreak has strangled the world economy and has tested the resilience of all health systems —robust or fragile.
 Main Text: A thorough literature review of published articles in Medline, Web of Science, Google Scholar, renowned business analysis blogs, and indexed economic journals using keywords: novel coronavirus, economy, and healthcare systems was carried out with particular emphasis on United States (U.S.) healthcare systems, National Health Service (NHS) in United Kingdome (U.K.), China, Singapore and Pakistan. While all categories of the economy have been affected, pandemic has directly affected people and possession processing services the most. For all countries analyzed, an average economic impact of -4.5% of GDP is expected. Despite its success, the China model cannot be the go-to paradigm everywhere as level of compliance to local authorities, harsh lockdown measures, and ability to quickly complete labor-intensive projects may not be replicable in other countries.
 Conclusions: COVID-19 pandemic has exposed multiple fault lines in health systems in term of accessibility, adaptability, and preparedness. It has also become clear that a global economy centered on the principle of capital accumulation and not societal uplift is not sustainable through times of crises.