Kristalina Georgieva:
It is very important for everyone everywhere. Why? Because what we are facing in the world is a two-track vaccination path that leads to two-track economic recovery.
In the United States, vaccinations have exceeded 50 percent. In many other advanced economies, they are going up in the territory that allows the economies to fully reopen, whereas, in many developing countries, and especially in low-income countries, vaccination rates are extremely low.
In Africa, less than 1 percent of the adult population is fully vaccinated, and yet we see the new Delta variant causing a third, very rapidly going-up wave of infections in Africa.
The impact of this is twofold. One, it is holding the recovery of the world economy back and, of course, harming people tremendously. We calculate that, if we accelerate vaccinations, if we vaccinate the world to 40 percent this year, 60 percent by the middle of next year, we will gain $9 trillion in output between now and 2025.
And 40 percent of this gain will be for advanced economies because of this rapid recovery of the world. And, two, because, when we don’t vaccinate people, we leave patches as fertile ground for new mutations that are ricocheting back in the developed world.