Authors: Laura Oliver 30 Mar 2020

The US and Eurozone’s economies could take until 2023 to recover from the impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, according to a new report from consultancy McKinsey & Company.

If the public health response, including social distancing and lockdown measures, is initially successful but fails to prevent a resurgence in the virus, the world will experience a “muted” economic recovery, says McKinsey. In this scenario, while the global economy would recover to pre-crisis levels by the third quarter of 2022, the US economy would need until the first quarter of 2023 and Europe until the third quarter of the same year.

If the public health response is stronger and more successful – controlling the spread of the virus in each country within two-to-three months – the outlook could be more positive, with economic recovery by the third quarter of 2020 for the US, the fourth quarter of 2020 for China and the first quarter of 2021 for the Eurozone.

In these scenarios involving partially effective interventions, policy responses could partially offset economic damage and help to avoid a banking crisis, says McKinsey. The firm has modelled nine scenarios, ranging from rapid and effective control of the virus with highly effective policy interventions to a broad failure of public health measures and ineffective policy and economic interventions.

The economic impact in the US, however, could exceed anything experienced since the end of World War II.

For More Information: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/economic-impact-covid-19/