By Amir Sadiq
AXA Group (AXA) has announced the strengthening of its action plan to tackle the health, economic and social emergency caused by the spread of Covid-19 globally.
This action plan includes protecting the livelihood of its employees, implementing measures for affected customers, donations in both cash and emergency health supplies and the commitment to research for infectious diseases including COVID-19.
“The world is going through a crisis that will stand in collective memory. In an unstable environment, AXA has been fully mobilised since the outbreak of the pandemic to respond to two challenges: The health emergency, by protecting its employees and clients, and the economic and social emergency, by ensuring the continuity of a business that is essential to society,” said AXA CEO Thomas Buberl in a statement.
AXA said that the current health crisis will have no impact on employment or on the remuneration of employees during the confinement period. The group will also not use temporary unemployment in France and will not defer any social security or tax payments in France during the period.
In several countries, including France, the group will continue to insure businesses even in the event of late payment due to the pandemic, for the duration of the containment period, and will ensure prompt payment to all suppliers to enable them to maintain the cash and liquidity needed to overcome the crisis.
Supporting healthcare professionals
AXA has extended coverage and services to healthcare professionals in several countries and leveraged its own medical networks and teleconsulting services to contribute to the healthcare effort, and will provide 2m masks to help healthcare workers.
The group is also supporting intensive care units through a partnership with the 101 Fund, a network of 1,200 intensive care centres in over 60 countries that aims to share real-time information from each unit to accelerate the improvement of therapeutic protocols.
This funding will also make it possible to set up accelerated training for caregivers in order to increase the staffing capacity of these units.
Funding infectious disease research
AXA Research Fund, which has supported research on infectious diseases and pandemics over the years will mobilise an additional EUR5m ($5.5m) for the development of responses to infectious diseases and COVID-19, including the implementation of post-crisis solutions.
AXA also supports the creation of the Institut Pasteur’s COVID-19 Task Force and the OpenCOVID-19 initiative launched by Just One Giant Lab, an open-source research platform aimed at providing low-cost emergency solutions to respond to the pandemic, with a particular focus on low-income countries.
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