UK risk management association Airmic has advised members to learn to live with pandemics and not expect things to return to normal anytime soon.
A new guide published by Airmic in partnership with Control Risks said risk professionals and their organisations need to learn the lessons, boost preparedness and build resilience.
The guide said that members have to face up to the fact that there will be more new variants of COVID-19 or even new pandemics, as human populations encroach further on animal habitats.
Airmic said, “All this accentuates the need for risk professionals to look beyond the present COVID-19 crisis.”
The association said the responses to the Omicron variant reveal how fragile societies now are. These also highlight how different the national responses have been.
“The worst of the COVID-19 pandemic appeared to be behind us, with the removal of restrictions in the UK in July 2021. Since then, people have started to return to the workplace and business travel is gradually on the increase. COVID-19 might not have gone away but societies had been learning to live with the virus.
“Yet, new developments such as the discovery of the Omicron variant of the virus threaten to undo much of the post-pandemic recovery. The responses we have seen to this variant reveal how fragile societies now are, and also how different the national responses to the virus and its variants have been,” the guide said.
Airmic said anti-establishment political parties lost support early in the pandemic, as voters saw them as not being competent enough to steer people through the crisis. But as the pandemic has dragged on and lockdown fatigue has grown, extremist forms of politics have returned with a vengeance.
The outbreak of violent protests in Belgium and the Netherlands in November, against fresh lockdown measures, showed how the recovery is susceptible to new developments. M