To manage the spread of the COVID-19 most employers re having their employees work from home to enhance the self-isolation and social distancing rule. This impact was significant because it had even some foreign-invested enterprises affected, like Tesla had its factory in Shanghai shut down temporarily. Apple also temporarily closed its stores in China.
While we count significant losses in the business sector, this outbreak also provided new opportunities for some industries. Read on.
Online Healthcare Services
The pandemic made medical platforms like AliHealth and Tencent HealthCare start providing free online diagnostic services. This helped patients differentiate the COVID-19 symptoms from the common cold and alleviate offline medical care pressure. Also, it gave the citizens a platform to access easy, fast, and convenient online medical care.
With this spread, people have become more aware of their general healthcare and life. This will promote more and advanced medical equipment and supplies and trigger the need for medical insurance and domestic health care products.
Online Education
When the pandemic proved to be taking longer than expected hence giving a significant blow to the education system, there was a need to continue learning. The only available way to stop delaying the learning process was the introduction of online education.
This enabled the teachers and students to connect virtually due to the social distancing aspect. DingTalk, office software developed by Alibaba Group and Tencent Live Broadcast, is broadly used by schools with 1.1 billion installation times during the pandemic period. Luckily, most embraced the new technology in education and had 730,000 of the 900,000 primary and middle school children using Tencent Live Broadcast.
Online Entertainment
Subsequently, from the lockdown, most cinemas and event venues in China remained closed down. Artists chose a different approach and had about 600 million videos recorded online, either shared on social media or streamed live on various video platforms.
With this new approach, the citizens enjoy more online movie premiers and artists performing virtually as the latest trend.
Online Fitness and Wellness
Offline gyms are no longer functional to curb the spread. Even though this hit differently, the Chinese fitness enthusiasts produce online workout programs to help people keep fit in their stay at home. Even though such programs existed before, the demand is hitting the roof during the pandemic period. Besides, all people continue to eat hence the need to keep fit and avoid more health complications.
China being the worst-hit by the pandemic continues to find solutions for the challenges that keep surfacing to save its people and enable a comfortable new life. However, even after the COVID-19 is down, life may not be back to the normal that everybody knew; hence more business ideas and opportunities are emerging.