COVID-19 impact: Over 13,600 lose jobs in listed companies

Over six listed lifestyle and apparel companies terminated more than 13,600 employees in the financial year 2019-20 due to low demand and declining sales in the wake of COVID-19 induced lockdowns and restrictions.

Moneycontrol News

August 13, 2021 / 09:49 IST

Companies including Shoppers Stop, Trent, Raymond, Bata, Arvind Fashions and V-Mart saw their combined workforce shrink by nearly one-fourth.[Representative image]

Over 13,600 employees lost jobs in listed lifestyle companies in wake of COVID-19.

Over six listed lifestyle and apparel companies terminated more than 13,600 employees in the financial year 2019-20 due to low demand and declining sales in the wake of COVID-19 induced lockdowns and restrictions.

Companies including Shoppers Stop, Trent, Raymond, Bata, Arvind Fashions and V-Mart saw their combined workforce shrink by nearly one-fourth, a report in The Economic Times said citing annual reports of the companies. The number of employees in these companies reduced from 56,260 to 42,579 in the financial year 2019-20.

“We estimate that 50 percent of these have been rendered unemployed due to lockdown,” Kumar Rajagopalan, chief executive officer of Retailers Association of India told the publication. “Even now, weekend restrictions in several states and norms which mandates all employees working to be fully vaccinated is impractical and will only worsen the situation.”

Arvind Fashions saw the biggest fall as it shrunk its workforce by 58 percent owing to exit from some brands such as Gap and Unlimited, the report added.

COVID-19 Vaccine

Frequently Asked Questions

How does a vaccine work?

A vaccine works by mimicking a natural infection. A vaccine not only induces immune response to protect people from any future COVID-19 infection, but also helps quickly build herd immunity to put an end to the pandemic. Herd immunity occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population becomes immune to a disease, making the spread of disease from person to person unlikely. The good news is that SARS-CoV-2 virus has been fairly stable, which increases the viability of a vaccine.

How many types of vaccines are there?

There are broadly four types of vaccine — one, a vaccine based on the whole virus (this could be either inactivated, or an attenuated [weakened] virus vaccine); two, a non-replicating viral vector vaccine that uses a benign virus as vector that carries the antigen of SARS-CoV; three, nucleic-acid vaccines that have genetic material like DNA and RNA of antigens like spike protein given to a person, helping human cells decode genetic material and produce the vaccine; and four, protein subunit vaccine wherein the recombinant proteins of SARS-COV-2 along with an adjuvant (booster) is given as a vaccine.

What does it take to develop a vaccine of this kind?

Vaccine development is a long, complex process. Unlike drugs that are given to people with a diseased, vaccines are given to healthy people and also vulnerable sections such as children, pregnant women and the elderly. So rigorous tests are compulsory. History says that the fastest time it took to develop a vaccine is five years, but it usually takes double or sometimes triple that time.

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