Business optimism improves in December amid COVID-19 vaccine rollout: Poll

News about COVID-19 vaccine approvals being around the corner is renewing hope among companies about future business prospects.

Verdict has been running a poll to study how business optimism is changing during COVID-19 as reflected by the views of companies on their future growth prospects amid the pandemic.

Analysis of the poll responses recorded in December reveals that optimism regarding future growth prospects has improved marginally in December compared to November.

The percentage of respondents who were optimistic improved to 59.67% in December, from 57.08% in November. While 36.81% were very optimistic, 22.86% were optimistic.

The percentage of respondents who were pessimistic during December was 11.07%, while 14.42% of the respondents were very pessimist, nearly unchanged compared to November. Further, the percentage of respondents who were neither optimistic nor pessimistic was 14.8% during the month.

The analysis is based on 2,537 responses received from the readers of Verdict network sites between 01 December and 31 December.

COVID-19 improves business optimism in December

Positive news over the development and approval of COVID-19 vaccines improved business optimism in December. Pfizer and BioNTech’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine (BNT162b2) and Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine were approved for emergency use by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Commission (EC) in December.

Resurgence of coronavirus cases and a new strain of the COVID-19 virus, however, initially dampened hopes for the global economy to recover.

Emerging economies are projected to benefit the most from vaccine rollout, which is expected to differ between countries. While some countries may be able to effectively administrate vaccines, others may fall short of inoculating roughly 30% of their populations forcing them to maintain social distancing and mobility restrictions.

The projected improvement in the global economy, however, will depend on the effectiveness of the vaccine in preventing the disease spread and providing immunity against the new strain.