Financial Times: Terry Stone On Returning To Work

As companies around the world think about bringing their employees back to the office after COVID-19, how exactly this will be done is falling on the private sector.

No matter what federal and state governments have done, “we’re pretty much relying on the private sector”, said Terry Stone, managing partner of Oliver Wyman’s health and life sciences group. “In many ways we’re all banking on what the private sector does, as individuals, because it’s the number one thing that will limit the spread,” she said.

Oliver Wyman’s Ms Stone said there that in addition to the privacy issues there are also cost hurdles for employers. “It’s extraordinarily hard to get your hands on adequate testing right now and it’s cost prohibitive: you can’t test everybody every day,” she said. “We’re estimating the cost is $50 to $120 per person per PCR lab test, and it’s not as if you test employees today and you don’t have to test them again for two weeks.”

To read the entire story, titled US Business Takes on Burden of Testing Employees for Coronavirus, please click here. (Subscription needed)

To learn about Oliver Wyman’s COVID-19 Pandemic Navigator which forecasts the number of new and cumulative COVID cases across nearly 40 countries, please click here.