Telecommuting emerges as downturn winner as life goes online in times of COVID-19

Read on to know how this niche segment is making the most coronavirus blues

Suyash Maheshwari

April 17, 2020 / 12:47 IST

The need to practice social distancing in the times of the coronavirus pandemic has forced millions of employees around the world to work from home.

Companies involved in telecommuting are seeing unprecedented growth in demand as more and more corporates shift to virtual offices amid the coronavirus pandemic.

San Francisco-based Slack Technologies added 2.5 million users between March 10 and 25, making it one of its most "productive" months.

Growth was “across the board” both geographically and in the rate of new team-account creation for current customers for March.

“A surge of brand-new people started in the week of March 9... by the week of March 16, growth was a steep vertical. Everything I was trying to accomplish as CEO in a cultural work sense, the efficacy of communication, was happening,” said founder Stewart Butterfield in an interview with MarketWatch.

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.

Show