COVID-19 • Bilans d’évènement
First Meeting of FKCCI Healthcare Working Group
On March 10th, 2020, the FKCCI organized the first session of the Covid-19 working group composed of FKCCI representatives, as well as experts and representatives of vaccine institutes, healthcare companies, air companies and the French Embassy. The goal of the working group is to give useful information to the French-Korean business community going beyond general information widely available on conventional media. The working group discussed three topics:
- Cross border impact on international travels.
All airline companies have adopted measures to limit operations of flights between France and Korea until the end of March or April.
- Air France will not operate any Paris to Incheon flights until May 3rd and Incheon to Paris flight until May 4th.
- Korean Air decided to keep operating daily but has downsized the aircrafts from Airbus 380 (407 seats) to Boeing 777-300 (291 seats) until March 28th.
- Asiana Airline has stopped all operation between France and Korea until April 24th.
The airline companies are looking daily at the evolution of the situation and may change their schedule accordingly. The working committee advises travelers to check every day the status on international travels as they are changing fast.
As of now, no strict restriction on travel between France and Korea are implemented, but quarantine and health checks are done on travelers showing symptoms (see the article on Passenger Freight below). As for business trips, it appears most companies have halted them except those of utmost importance.
- Business continuity during the crisis
The Covid-19 Working Group stressed several practices and key learnings to ensure smooth business continuity.
- Companies have installed systems such as home office but for employees who are not used to such working conditions and isolation for a long period, it is advised to provide assistance. This notion of employees’ resilience should be considered seriously, and associations such as International SOS can provide personalized assistance in that regard.
- Another key learning is IT preparedness for business continuance and home office measures. It was noted that even if IT tools are ready, companies should make sure their employees are educated and used to the IT tools for remote work.
- Thirdly, it was advised that managers should always keep sight of the after-crisis period and make plan for mid-term business recovery. CEOs should designate a person specifically in charge of the crisis management to make time for overseeing mid-term and long-term business planning.
- Assessment of the crisis management
As many uncertainties remain on the outbreak of the virus, it is advised to maintain prevention measures as long as it has not been contained definitely. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) is currently leading global research on the virus to aggregate and select the most promising researches on COVID-19.
The daily discovery of cases in China and Korea have stabilized or slowed down thanks to their remarkable management of the sanitary crisis, owing to the strong involvement and discipline of the authorities (the KCDC in Korea in particular), economic actors and the population in terms of prevention and respect of general hygiene guidelines. Some interrogations were raised about the rest of the world whether Europe or United States would have such capacity of mobilization. It was stressed that China and Korea should be taken as business cases to follow.
