The Global Economic Hibernation: Macroeconomic Indicators and Health Management Policies

Abstract

Considering its dire effects on different sectors, the coronavirus is far more than a healthproblem. The pandemic has hit the global economy starting with the developed world and nowspreading into emerging economies. It is a fact that developing countries are moredisadvantageous in this process since not only their health conditions and health services arenot so sophisticated as their developed counterparts, but also macroeconomic conditions arenot strong enough to endure such a long-lasting socio-economic crisis. Those countries arepoorer and it is hard for them to allocate sources to the health sector. Comparing with emergingeconomies, the developed world also has been suffering from the severe effects of thepandemic. Because of long-lasting lock-down and contractions in the global economy, alldeveloped economies revealed negative economic growth rates for the proceeding years. Thepurpose of this article is not only to compare the macroeconomic effects of the coronavirusdisease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on developed and developing countries but also to assisteconomy authorities, health care leaders, and their organizations in anticipating andpreempting problems by providing alternative health management policies rather than reacting.Macroeconomic variables data that are released by the World Bank and IMF will be appliedto make the comparisons.