The Impact of the SARS-CoV-19 Pandemic on the Global Gross Domestic Product

Abstract

The rapid, unexpected, and large-scale expansion of the SARS-CoV-19 pandemic has led to a global health and economy crisis. However, although the crisis itself is a worldwide phenomenon, there have been considerable differences between respective countries in terms of SARS-CoV-19 morbidities and fatalities as well as the GDP impact. The object of this paper was to study the influence of the SARS-CoV-19 pandemic on global gross domestic product. We analyzed data relating to 176 countries in the 11-month period from February 2020 to December 2020. We employed SARS-CoV-19 morbidity and fatality rates reported by different countries as proxies for the development of the pandemic. The analysis employed in our study was based on moving median and quartiles, Kendall tau-b coefficients, and multi-segment piecewise-linear approximation with Theil–Sen trend lines. In the study, we empirically confirmed and measured the negative impact of the SARS-CoV-19 pandemic on the respective national economies. The relationship between the pandemic and the economy is not uniform and depends on the extent of the pandemic’s development. The more intense the pandemic, the more adaptive the economies of specific countries become.