Overseas Situation Report Wednesday 30th June 2021
By Mike Evans
“Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create.”
― Roy T. Bennett
The impact of the pandemic has been felt across the globe and one area of commerce that has been hit hardest is the hospitality industry and the suppliers of this sector.
In this report, we are looking at how the company that supplies 25% of the world’s beer consumption has had to adapt to these different times.
AB Inbev. makers of beers such as Budweiser, Stella Artois and Carlsberg, operate in markets facing totally different scenarios. In late March, executives at the biggest brewer in the world were working on a project they had code-named EU-phoria.
The U.K. was scheduled to reopen outdoor dining in a few weeks, followed by much of Europe. Anheuser-Busch InBev SA’s data scientists were projecting beer sales would surge as people reunited with friends and family after months’ long lockdowns.
In Bangalore, India, Maninder Singh Grewal was feeling hopeful, too. The 38-year-old was AB InBev’s Global Director of Analytics. When the pandemic hit, his team of about 70 had pivoted from making projections for beer sales and supply to projecting where and when Covid-19 restrictions would ease or tighten around the world.
Predicting the next Covid-19 wave proved difficult. However, the team had some success at forecasting the extent and timing of a wave’s peak once it had begun. His team had identified dates when the pandemic could spike again in India – holidays when people traditionally gathered in large groups. One by one, those dates had passed with no surge.
Vaccinations were gaining steam in many developed countries, and Mr. Grewal’s team was shifting its focus toward the post-pandemic world, and how the company could bounce back. Then, on Thursday, April 1, 
he received a text message from a colleague.’ It looks like we are right this time’, it said. ‘What do you mean?’ he replied.
It was three days after the start of Holi, a Hindu spring festival. The data team was seeing signs of an alarming new Covid-19 spike in India.
Mr. Grewal’s team had shifted its focus too soon. India was soon overwhelmed by the coronavirus and is just now beginning to emerge from the depths of one of its biggest crises since the country’s independence.
Few companies are as global as AB InBev, the brewer of Budweiser, one out of every four beers sold world-wide. It has operations in nearly 50 countries and breweries around the world, including in Europe, the U.S., Africa, Brazil and China. The international footprint poses a massive challenge, forcing the company to manage through waves of the pandemic and uneven vaccine rollouts across the world.
With the pandemic receding in some places and surging elsewhere, multinational firms continue to confront a test unlike any they have ever seen.
Airlines across the world were trimming back flights, to alleviate potential strains on its operations, after ramping up quickly to meet a surge in travel demand. Food and household goods manufacturers started to raise prices as raw materials began to get harder to source. Retail businesses had to start to re-evaluate their business models as consumers started to change their shopping habits to work with the worldwide lockdowns.
At AB InBev, faces rising costs of raw materials across some of its biggest markets and says it plans to raise prices in line with inflation.
AB InBev executives say that navigating through the pandemic, the company has learned to pivot more quickly and to move at different speeds all at once. It put skills such as procurement and marketing to use in new ways – sourcing oxygen machines and promoting vaccinations.
In India, the brewer has been using its Budweiser accounts on Twitter and Instagram to repost pleas from people searching for blood or oxygen for gravely ill loved ones. Amid a shortage of hospital beds, the company has struck agreements with private hospitals to provide beds in intensive-care units for AB InBev employees if any become sick enough to need one.
In Europe, where many countries re-opened outdoor dining in May, the company has quickly ramped up production. Also, it has extended payment terms so that cash-strapped bars could get kegs on tap before their patrons returned.
The company procured equipment to set up a public field hospital in Mexico City and worked with Colombia’s health ministry on an ad campaign encouraging people to get vaccinated. In Argentina, the brewer set up a public vaccination site administering up to 1,500 vaccines a day. Latin America, which is enduring another devastating surge, represents about 40% of the company’s revenue.
In the U.S., where it bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008, the company forecast each state’s vaccination rate to prepare for the full re-opening of bars, stadiums and other venues. That meant restarting draft lines, putting trucks in place, and making sales calls at bars and restaurants at just the right moment – before they stocked up. The brewer is contending with a volatile supply chain but said it has managed to meet demand so far this year in the U.S.
Much of this has relied on the company’s analytics teams, said Michel Doukeris, who leads AB InBev’s U.S. operations. “The challenge starts with you having the right forecast. That’s why data and analytics are very important,” he said in an interview. “If the company adjusted its production after bars and restaurants had already reopened, the brewer would never be able to catch up”, he said.
To build that forecasting capability, the company hired Mr. Grewal, who grew up in a small town in central India. A chemical engineer turned data scientist, he joined AB InBev in 2017 to form a global forecasting team with assistance from a company adviser at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The idea was to use forecasting techniques to project beer sales volumes by country in the company’s top 20 markets. It later expanded its forecasting into marketing, finance, strategy and logistics planning.
When the pandemic shut offices around the world in March 2020, he began working from home in Bangalore, two laptops balanced on an ironing board in the corner of his toddler’s bedroom. Now he and his team had a new task: predicting the course of the pandemic. They tracked hospitalization rates, mobility data, Google trends and other data.
Mr. Grewal’s team was projecting that much of Europe would resume outdoor dining in late April or early May – right at the beginning of the summer season. To do that, the team looked to Australia. The company doesn’t do business there but used publicly available data to inform its European models. Restaurant bookings in Australia soared when the hospitality sector re-opened.
The response would be similarly ebullient in Europe, Mr. Grewal told his colleagues in Europe. The brewer, he said, should plan on selling a lot of beer.
That meant brewing enough to meet projected demand. It also meant turning keg-production lines back on in breweries, extending payment terms for wholesalers, bars and restaurants that needed to stock up, and offering advice to pubs on reopening. By the beginning of April, “Project EU-phoria” was being put into action.
With much of Europe now opening up and the Euro 2020 football tournament in full swing, AB InBev’s breweries were busy filling 50-litre kegs with the top-selling beers in the U.K. and Europe: Stella Artois, Budweiser, and, for pubs in Belgium, that country’s favourite brand, Jupiler. For the moment, bar owners could turn on four out of 10 taps and restock with just their top-selling beer brands, AB InBev suggested, and later, with cash coming in, they could expand their menus with specialty beers, hard liquor and soft drinks.
Their summer marketing plans were also well under way. If Belgium wins the European soccer championship, which ends July 11, Jupiler, the team’s sponsor, plans to give everyone in the country a free beer.
The company began a U.K. television campaign on April 6 for Stella Artois, promising to tip bar staff 1 British pound for every pint of Stella served.
On the same day, Mr. Grewal opened his team’s bi-weekly report and saw dire projections for India. The analysts’ algorithm projected that the country’s new surge would be much worse than its first wave the year before. A couple of days later, academic articles and social-media posts began reporting a troubling new wave of illnesses.
The company’s Indian brewing operations shut down for more than a month last year, aside from a small number of people allowed in the breweries to keep the yeast going and beer fresh, when India halted manufacturing across the country in one of the world’s most stringent, and economically devastating, lockdowns. Mr. Sharma, who also is based in Bangalore, turned Budweiser’s social media accounts into an amplifier for people seeking help, reposting images of handwritten doctor’s prescriptions and other requests for blood plasma, ventilators and medications such as remdesivir, an antiviral drug.
“Need ICU Bed for my mother #Nellore Searching bed since yesterday,” said one message retweeted by Budweiser India, listing vital statistics for a 52-year-old woman with diabetes, shortness of breath and an oxygen level of 70%.
In late April, about 100 of Mr. Sharma’s employees in India were in quarantine with Covid-19, and close to 15 were in the hospital, though none in critical condition. Mr. Sharma had lined up ICU beds in case any of them needed to be transferred.
He also had a team procuring oxygen concentrators from suppliers outside the country for state governments that needed them in India. By late May, it procured more than 300. The company also paid for the expansion of a city hospital in Karnakata to add isolation wards, ICU facilities and oxygen lines.
The catastrophic surge in India shifted his team’s priorities. Now, even as he and his data team help the company plan for post-pandemic life, they are also mapping out worst-case scenarios—third waves, fourth waves, and vaccine-resistant variants.
“We had started thinking that this is behind us—if people can just continue for a little longer what they’ve been doing, it can all be behind us.” Mr. Grewal said. “Now, we’re not ruling anything out.”
Until the next time, Stay Safe.
Total Cases Worldwide – 182,599,041
Total Deaths Worldwide – 3,954,130
Total Recovered Worldwide – 167,213,880
Total Active Cases Worldwide – 11,431,031 (6.3% of the total cases)
Total Closed Cases Worldwide – 171,168,010
Information and resources:
According to the document from the regional health authorities, the schools had a total of eight active outbreaks, which allowed the identification of 88 cases of infection by the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, most of which in the Padre Cabanita 2nd and 3rd cycle elementary school, in Loulé (29 cases), and at the Areal Gordo Basic School and Kindergarten, in Faro (21).
In a statement, the municipality said that the testing would include all users of residential structures for the elderly and residential homes, home support service, day centers and temporary shelter, socio-occupational forum and center for occupational activities in the area of disability intellectual, totalling 19 institutions.
The facts took place during a patrol action. The Guard’s military verified “that a party was taking place on the public road, which was attended by 19 people”.
Passengers wishing to change their bookings may do so by visiting the office at Avenida do Mar e das Comunidades Madeirenses, number 20 (open Monday-Friday from 08h30 to 18h00 & on Saturdays from 09h00 to 12h30 and 14h00 to 20h00), the office at Rua D. Estevão de Alencastre, Loja 6/7, Porto Santo (open Monday-Friday from 09h00 to 12h30), by calling 291 210 300 (Monday to Friday – 09h00-12h30 & 14h00-18h00) or by sending an email to 
We found ourselves in a position, which I hope you fully appreciate, that there was no news of this at the time anywhere in the media, or on social media groups, but it was important to publish the law asap so people were aware even if the answers were not there. We therefore published and as a result we have to date received some 830 comments (mainly questions) which we have done our best to answer – where we can do so – in other words where there are answers!
The EU’s COVID Digital Certificate aims to facilitate safe and free movement in the European Union during the Covid-19 pandemic, promoting the non-applicability of additional measures and restrictions imposed by the destination country during a trip, including testing and quarantine procedures/mandatory prophylactic isolation required on arrival in the country of destination. However, you should consult the restrictions on movement imposed by the country of destination, before your journey.
With regard to age groups, the highlight goes to the age group between 50 –64 years, which already has 85% (1,847,758) with a dose and 51% with full vaccination (1,103,443).
The data is from the European Court of Auditors (TCE), which in a report released today concludes that “the rights of air transport passengers in the European Union were left on the ground during the Covid-19 pandemic, namely in Portugal , due to successive cancellations and restrictions.
The measure was published today in the Official State Bulletin (BOE) and will be in effect until July 31 and will only start being applied on Friday to give British tour operators and tourists time to adapt to the new rules, justified the Prime Minister Spanish, Pedro Sánchez.
On Friday, heavy rain caused the dragging of a vehicle from the Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Povoação, where the two employees, who would be providing home support, were driving.
At the Hospital in Faial, there are “many specialties where there are not even resident doctors, there are contracts with external doctors”, said the person in charge.
With many EU countries opening up their borders to vaccinated Americans, there was a lot of expectation that the same would be happening in the USA. However, on Friday, the US Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken cut off the hopes of millions that the US could, within days, reciprocate the EU’s move to reopen the borders.
Norway last week joined the European Union’s gateway for the issuance and verification of the EU COVID-19 Vaccination Passport for those who have been vaccinated against the Coronavirus, those who have recovered in the last six months, and those who test negative before their trip.
All persons arriving in Denmark from one of the above-mentioned countries/regions placed on the green list will be permitted entry into the country without being subject to the testing or quarantine requirements. At the same time, the Ministry announced that several other countries have moved to the yellow list:
Furthermore, the Hungarian government has offered people who live in the neighbouring countries’ mutual borders to get vaccinated in Hungary starting from July, regardless of whether they are Hungarian or non-Hungarian citizens. However, those crossing the border for vaccination must be 18 or older, and individuals have to accept the vaccine offered, whichever it is.
Finally, our nearest neighbour Spain has abolished testing for arrivals from the majority of regions of Germany and Italy. Most regions in Germany and Italy have been excluded from Spain’s high-risk list of countries and areas, based on the Covid-19 infection rate. As a result, Spain now permits citizens of these regions to travel the country without being obliged to present a negative result of the Covid-19 test or proof of vaccination or recovery.
There were 23,675 travellers under monitoring by the health authorities. Monitoring is being carried out through the ‘MadeiraSafe’ app.
Vice-Admiral Gouveia e Melo also visited the vaccination centre in Porto Santo on Friday. He had nothing but praise for the vaccination process in the Autonomous Region of Madeira. He said the Region “is a national example on the vaccination process” and assured he will reflect on the many things he had learnt during his visit to the archipelago.
Lastly, unconnected with Covid-19, was the publication of Council of Minister’s resolution 78/2021 which approves the National Program for Companion Animals, which constitutes a new framework for public policy on the well-being of pet animals. This is by far the most comprehensive and ambitious development for the well-being of companion animals, and includes for instance the establishment of the Animal Ombudsman, with the mission of guaranteeing the defence and promotion of animal welfare and the preparation, by the Institute for the Conservation of Nature and Forests, IP (ICNF, IP), of a national strategy for stray animals. The overall framework of the plan can be 
Regarding movement in and out of the AML the police (PSP) have made it clear that they will be focusing their actions mainly on the control of people who travel by train, bus and plane. According to the Government, people who have a digital certificate or negative test to covid-19 can enter and leave the Metropolitan Area, as well as those who allowed under the exceptions in place, which we have posted under our Facebook page yesterday.
The levels once again surpass those registered in the last update, two days ago, when the indicators were 128.6 and 129.6, respectively. These are numbers clearly above the red line of 120, which have already forced the brake on de-confinement throughout the national territory.
Also according to official information, so far more than 50 defendants have been constituted.
“I spoke with Mrs. Merkel and confirmed her own interpretation of the statements she had made, I didn’t really see an inconvenience or criticism, I saw it more as a hypothesis. She had a bit of the idea that the growth of the Delta variant could be associated with the Champions final, [but] she verified by the numbers that, as the final took place in the city of Porto and with two thirds of this variant concentrated in the Lisbon region, it was very difficult to establish any kind of connection”, said António Costa.
According to the Mayor of Povoação,”at this moment, we still don’t have information on the bodies. The river is being swept from top to bottom to see if anything is found. The firefighters are also trying to open the van that it was so damaged that it is still not possible to see if anybody was left inside”.
“There is clearly an age repercussion of vaccination, protecting the most vulnerable, especially people over 50 years of age. It is between 50 and 55 that we are now vaccinating and it is with this guarantee of the result of the vaccination that we are also able to adopt lighter measures in what is the control of the pandemic”, said the regional secretary of Health and Sports of the Azores, Clélio Meneses.
The municipality of Ribeira Grande registered four new cases (two in Pico da Pedra, one in Matriz and one in Ribeirinha). In the municipality of Vila Franca do Campo, there was a new case in the parish of Ponta Garça. There were five new cases in the municipality of Ponta Delgada (two in Arrifes, two in Fajã de Baixo and on in Capelas). There are seven new cases in the municipality of Lagoa (six in Água de Pau and one in Santa Cruz).
At the national level, from the last June 14th to Sunday, there was a reduction of the Rt from 1.20 to 1.1, which was also registered in the Lisbon and Vale do Tejo region, where it went from 1.26 to 1.11, advances the weekly report of the epidemic curve of the National Institute of Health Doctor Ricardo Jorge (INSA),
Albufeira is one of the three municipalities in the country with a very high risk level of incidence of covid-19, which means that, according to the measures announced on Thursday by the Government, this weekend non-essential trade and catering must close at 15:30.