Navigating your Business During COVID-19

According to Elizabeth McGraw, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Dynamics at Pennsylvania State University, risks of coronavirus infection from packages are extremely low, even though the virus could live on surfaces for days.
The World Health Organization has issued similar guidance, saying, "The likelihood of an infected person contaminating commercial goods is low and the risk of catching the virus that causes COVID-19 from a package that has been moved, travelled, and exposed to different conditions and temperature is also low.

If you sell internationally and sourcing locally is too costly, disperse your sources into each of your major markets. If these sources are dispersed, the economies of scale are lower and the capital costs are higher, but your transportation costs will be lower. It also spreads the risk. Aggressively evaluate near-shore options to shorten supply chains and increase proximity to customers.
If the majority of your market is local but you’re unable to keep up with the costs of sourcing locally, look for multiple manufacturers and suppliers overseas with competitive pricing that would be able to supply your products to you in the case that your main supplier is facing closures.

Tackle strategic and concentrated supplies with high value at risk where internal risk capacities to absorb, such as alternative sources, routes, inventory and cash reserves, aren’t sufficient enough to mitigate any major disruption. Being better prepared than the competition might even open new opportunities when the next disruption comes around.
It’s impossible to anticipate the arrival of global crises such as the coronavirus outbreak, but business owners can mitigate their impacts by taking supply chain preparedness to a higher level. They should act before a disruption occurs and adjust and execute new plans afterward rather than starting from scratch every time they are plunged into a new crisis.

No. Both countries are anxious to arrest the spread of COVID-19 without choking off the essential flow of trade and commerce in both directions over the Canada-U.S. border, particularly at a time when the economic impact of the escalating global pandemic is expected to be severe.