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at the time that I am writing this there have been 559,351 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with more than 25,000 deaths with the elderly getting the worst hits with this deadly disease but what does this mean to a lot of businesses? 
Planning for pandemic risk management should start early and be geared to the 4 phases of pandemic planning (the PPRR model). Prevention, preparedness, response and recovery. Every business if you ask me needs a business continuity plan. It sets out how you will prepare for a pandemic and continue to operate after the disaster. It will help to minimise recovery time and reduce your business losses. 
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<strong>Some of the benefits of having a BCP are:</strong>
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Having a business continuity plan in place will keep businesses trading when they would have otherwise have probably failed due to an incident. 
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Business continuity plans can significantly reduce the cost of disruptions. 
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Companies with business continuity plans benefit from insurance premium discounts, reduced excesses and doors opening to new insurance markets.
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 Having a business continuity plan allows what would otherwise be unacceptable risks to be insured. 
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There are many enforceable circumstances that arise when businesses do not actually have a BCP. If we have a look at the COVID-19 pandemic, no one could have anticipated that the pandemic would turn into a global pandemic and affect a lot of economies, but it has and now that it is here, companies are having to use a lot of fire fighting tactics to make sure that they can survive after this pandemic. 
Some of the issues that companies are having face is to pay employees when they are not trading due to the fact that many countries have gone into a lock down. This has prevented a lot of companies from trading as only essential services are the ones that are supposed to remain open. 
Many businesses consider insuring companies against a fire, hurricane or a tornado as being the only type of insurance that is deemed to be quite necessary but may businesses now will have to struggle with trying to pay their employees when they are not making any money which will put a huge strain on some businesses.
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