AS we finally reach the end of this ghastly year, it is natural to search for signs that 2021 will be healthier, happier and more economically prosperous than the months of misery we have had to endure since coronavirus began to dominate our daily reality.

The roll-out of vaccines offers the brightest hope of a return to normality, and there was huge news on this front yesterday, when the Oxford-AstraZeneca jab was given the green light for use by the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency.

While numerous other vaccines have either been approved for use or are under development, the Oxford inoculation has been hailed as a “game changer”, given that it will be priced significantly cheaper, and distributed and stored more easily than the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine currently in use.

Despite the understandable joy that met the prospect of a rapid roll-out of the Oxford vaccine, it would still appear too early to get a firm sense of when a significant easing of restrictions will be ushered in. Health experts have been routinely warning us to expect the checks on our daily lives to continue for some time to come, which is understandable given the worrying rate with which the new strain of coronavirus is spreading throughout the UK population.

However, there are at least now signs in the Scottish business world of companies planning for life beyond Covid, which have provided a welcome tonic in recent days.

The Edinburgh International Conference Centre (EICC), which has not welcomed people since before lockdown in March (it has been staging virtual events in the period since), announced last week that it had booked three major events for the latter part of 2021.

The British Society of Lifestyle Medicine, Cleantech Forum Europe and the Society for Endocrinology conferences are expected to draw 1,000, 400 and 1,000 delegates each in September, October and November. In addition to boosting the EICC itself, the events should benefit the many cafes, bars and restaurants in its vicinity, assuming there are fewer restrictions on travelling and meeting in hospitality settings.

With the events industry worth £6 billion to the Scottish economy, EICC chief executive Marshall Dallas was right to underline the significance of the sector to the recovery from the pandemic, while recognising the importance of the vaccination programme in this regard.

Crucially, the pipeline of opportunities open to the EICC in terms of enquiries from organisers interested in bringing their events to Scotland is also said to be strong.

“We are confident we will see more UK conferences and events feed through next year, with a fuller return to international conferences in 2022,” Mr Dallas said.

"We also know that business events will be a key driver in rebooting the Scottish economy as we come out of the pandemic."

Anyone doubting the role events can play in shaping an economy need only look at the importance being attached to Glasgow hosting COP26, the UN Climate Change Conference, next November.

It is no exaggeration to say that the eyes of the world will be on the city when international leaders gather to discuss how to accelerate moves to tackle climate change.

With 30,000 delegates expected to attend, it should trigger a much-needed boost for the hospitality industry, which has suffered so much throughout the course of the pandemic. Moreover, as Stuart Patrick, chief executive of Glasgow Chamber of Commerce wrote in The Herald yesterday, COP26 will also be an opportunity to showcase Glasgow as a “city brimming with technological and social innovation”.

Hope has also been in the air at commercial property firm CBRE. Its report on the outlook for the commercial property market, published shortly before Christmas, caught the eye with its decidedly optimistic note.

Unveiled just a day before the UK and EU announced a Brexit deal had been struck, CBRE declared that an agreement would effectively remove one of the biggest drags on the market for the last five years. It forecast that the logistics sector would continue to be attractive to investors as consumers do more and more of their shopping online, and that the residential market would perform well too, boosted by “tax incentives, resilient demand and lagging supply”.

But there were words of caution in the report as well.

CBRE expects the recovery of the office market to be gradual, which is unsurprising given the ongoing advice for people to work at home if they can. And it expects the retail sector to be its “biggest challenge”, following a year that has seen a host of big names collapse into administration and either emerge with smaller estates or, in some cases, cease trading altogether.

Of course, while there may be green shoots of recovery in certain parts of the economy, the difficulties facing many businesses in the coming months should not be overlooked.

Despite the promise offered by the vaccination programme, the reality is that thousands of businesses will be prevented from trading or forced to operate at significantly reduced capacity in the weeks ahead as the country strives to contain the spread of the new, highly transmissible variant of coronavirus.

This is particularly the case for industries such as hospitality, tourism, retail and aviation, across which hundreds of thousands of jobs have already been lost since the pandemic took hold.

The furlough scheme has, for the time being at least, been able to place a cap on job losses. But the existence of the job support scheme does not remove the risk of even more firms going under, given the overheads they continue to face after months of enforced closure and trading restrictions.

Indeed, even though furlough does cover 80 per cent of salaries for hours not worked, up to a maximum of £2,500 per month, it must be remembered that employers still have to cover National Insurance Contributions and pension costs. They also face numerous other outlays, from utility bills to borrowings on properties.

In these circumstances, and particularly with an end to the Covid nightmare now seemingly within reach, government ministers must find the resources for one last push and come up with the cash to ensure as many jobs and businesses are safeguarded as possible. And that cash must not only be more generous than what is currently on offer, but delivered now, not weeks into the future. Time is of the essence.