Spending $50bn on vaccination could save the world economy, OECD
It could cost as little as $50 billion to save the global economy.
That’s the amount needed to vaccinate the world, a measure that’s key to ending the pandemic and
tackling the imbalances
“plaguing the recovery,” according to OECD Chief
Economist Laurence Boone.
“When you balance things out, $10 trillion for supporting the economy going through
the pandemic compared
with a tiny $50 billion to bring the vaccine to the entire
world population, that
looks completely disproportionate,” she told Bloomberg
Television in an interview Wednesday. The first number is
the amount spent by Group of 20 countries to
mitigating the economic impact of Covid-19.
The emergence of omicron increases the uncertainty already
weighing on the
global economic outlook and highlights vaccination shortcomings,
she said. While the Paris-based organization didn’t directly account for that strain in its
new forecasts, it
emphasized continued pandemic risks and urged governments
to address low
inoculation rates in some regions so as not to create “breeding
grounds for
deadlier strains.”
Note: High income, higher middle income, lower middle and
low income countries refer to the World Bank standard
groupings. All doses, including boosters, are
counted individually. As the same person may receive
more than one dose, the
number of doses can be higher than the number of people
in the population
On top of tighter virus restrictions including renewed
lockdowns in some parts, OECD members are battling
soaring inflation and hold-ups in global supply chains that are starving factories of components.