IANAL but the way our in-house counsel explained it to me is that a pandemic shouldn’t necessarily be a force majeure event, which is about the inability of the parties to execute the contract.

A pandemic would cause a force majeure if the work can only happen onsite and the government has shut down the physical offices.

A pandemic may cause a force majeure for a solo contractor if they catch the disease and are in the ICU.

A pandemic would not cause a force majeure because a company has decided to rethink its priorities as a result of a pandemic.

So a pandemic is covered by the concept of a force majeure without being explicit. The again, we were arguing that the pandemic isn’t/wasn’t force majeure so someone else may have other opinions.