According to a research, it will result in global GDP losses of about $ 2.3 trillion between 2022 and 2025, nearly equal to the yearly GDP of France.
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| [COVID-19 Vaccine] |
The shortage of dosages in the world's poorest countries is not simply a health issue, but also a financial and geopolitical one. This is the finding of a study released on Wednesday by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which looked at the cost of vaccine delays throughout the world. Between 2022 and 2025, she calculates that the cumulative delays will cost the globe $2,300 billion in GDP (1,960 billion euros). This is a statistic that is almost as significant as France's yearly GDP.
More than 4.7 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccine have now been delivered worldwide, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit. "Rich countries administered 100 times more vaccines than poor countries." according to the report. "By the end of August, around 60 percent of the population in high-income countries had received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine" according to the EIU, but "only 1 percent of the poorest populations"
However, the research cautions that " those who will have vaccinated less than 60 percent of their population by mid-2022 will record a total of GDP losses of $ 2.3 trillion" over the next three years. Developing countries will bear two-thirds of these losses.
In terms of total losses, Asia will be the most devastated area on the planet (73 percent of the total). Sub-Saharan African nations would be severely affected: they are estimated to lose 2.9 percent of GDP between 2022 and 2025 owing to vaccine delays, compared to 0 percent for Western Europe and the United States.
The risk of social unrest due to slow vaccination
And there are repercussions to this disparity in vaccine coverage. It will stifle emerging economies' ability to catch up economically. The latter will take considerably longer than the affluent nations to return to pre-crisis levels, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, since "social distancing measures will sometimes have to be re-imposed in countries where vaccination rates remain low" Furthermore, visitors are unlikely to return anytime soon, putting those who rely on tourism at a disadvantage.
That's not all, though. The research cautions that delays in vaccination will "increase the risk of social unrest in these areas," “In emerging countries, resentment is high, both against local governments (who are seen as unable to provide much-needed vaccines) and richer states (who are seen as stockpiling vaccines),” the authors remark. "episodes of social unrest are very likely in the months and years to come" they say.
Few hopes and a bleak outlook
According to the EIU, "little chance that the gap in access to vaccines will ever be bridged." Even if the goals were modest, the study estimates that the Covax device did not fulfill them. The initiative has so far supplied 215 million doses to 138 nations, which is insufficient to immunize 20% of each participating country's population.
Rich countries have also been chastised by the Economist Intelligence Unit for promising a large number of doses to impoverished countries but failing to deliver. "To date, the United Kingdom has delivered only about 10 percent of the 100 million doses it has promised to give to developing countries by mid-2022," she complains.
Finally, the EIU laments the fact that rich countries are now more concerned with immunizing children and conducting recall campaigns than with supplying dosages to countries in desperate need. This, she claims, will further aggravate "shortages of raw materials and bottlenecks in production."
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The Economist Intelligence Unit
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The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) is part of The Economist group, which also publishes the same-named magazine. The EIU is well-known for publishing an annual democracy index. She looked at over 200 nations this time.
It initially identified the nations that will reach 60 percent vaccine coverage against Covid-19 between mid-2022 and the beginning of 2023, as well as those that will do so in 2023 and beyond. It did so by taking into consideration "supply agreements, production constraints, reluctance to vaccination, the size of the population and the availability of health workers"
She then developed a model to predict the impact of shorter vaccination durations on each country's GDP growth between 2022 and 2025. Finally, she compared this information to her own GDP growth projections, allowing her to assess global and regional GDP losses due to immunization delays.