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A woman reacts when she is vaccinated against Covid-19 with a dose of the Covishield vaccine on August 12, 2021 at a vaccination center in Mumbai.

PUNIT PARANJPE | AFP | Getty Images

The global economy will lose trillions of GDP due to late vaccination deadlines, with developing countries bearing the most losses due to uneven introduction, the Economist Intelligence Unit said in a report.

Countries that fail to vaccinate 60% of their populations by mid-2022 will lose $ 2.3 trillion between 2022 and 2025, the EIU predicted.

“The emerging economies will shoulder about two-thirds of these losses, which will further delay their economic convergence with the more developed countries,” wrote Agathe Demarais, EIU’s global forecasting director.

There is little chance that the vaccine access gap will ever be bridged.

Agathe Demarais

Global Forecasting Director for the Economist Intelligence Unit

Asia will be “by far the hardest hit continent” in absolute terms, with losses of $ 1.7 trillion, or 1.3% of the region’s forecast GDP. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa will lose around 3% of their forecast GDP, the highest percentage, according to the report.

“These estimates are striking, but they only partially capture missed economic opportunities, especially in the long run,” the EIU said, noting that the impact of the pandemic on education was not included in this forecast. Richer countries turned to distance learning during the lockdown, but many in developing countries did not have that option.

More than 213 million people have contracted Covid-19 and at least 4.4 million have died during the pandemic, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University showed.

Rich-poor divide

Wealthy nations are moving far in their Covid vaccination rates, moving towards a booster and reopening their economies, while poorer countries are drastically lagging behind in the race for vaccination.

As of August 23, around 5 billion doses of the vaccine had been given worldwide, but according to Our World in Data, the figure was only 15.02 million of those doses in low-income countries.

“The vaccination campaigns are advancing at an icy pace in low-income economies,” says the EIU report.

The report said that vaccine injustice was due to global shortages of manufacturing capacity and vaccine raw materials, logistical difficulties in transporting and storing vaccines, and hesitation due to suspicion of vaccines.

Many developing countries cannot afford vaccines for their residents either, and hope for donations from richer countries, but global initiatives have not been entirely successful in providing vaccines to those in need.

“There’s little chance the vaccine access gap will ever be bridged,” EIU’s Demarais said in a statement. “COVAX, the WHO-sponsored initiative to ship vaccines to emerging countries, has not lived up to (modest) expectations. “

“Despite flattering press releases and generous promises, donations from rich countries have only covered a fraction of the need – and often they are not even delivered,” she wrote.

Covax aimed to ship around 2 billion doses of vaccine this year, but has only shipped 217 million doses so far, according to UNICEF tracker.

Some of the shipments went to developed countries such as the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the Associated Press reported.

Effects of Inequality

Poorer countries are likely to recover from the pandemic more slowly, especially if restrictions have to be reintroduced due to lower vaccination rates, the EIU said.

Tourists could also avoid countries with large unvaccinated populations for safety reasons, while political resentment is likely to increase, the report said. Residents may be unhappy that their local governments cannot provide vaccines and see states richer than hoarders of the shots.

“Social unrest is very likely in the months and years to come,” wrote Demarais.

Additionally, the virus situation continues to evolve, with herd immunity likely out of reach due to the highly transmissible Delta variant and vaccination being sought “more modestly” to reduce severe cases, hospitalizations and deaths, the report said.

Political leaders are busy responding to short-term emergencies such as the rapid rise in infection rates, but now need to develop a longer-term strategy, Demarais wrote.

“Here, too, the rich-poor contrast will be strong: vaccinated, richer states have a choice, unvaccinated, poorer ones don’t,” she said.

A person has a nasal swab applied for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) test taken at a mobile testing site in Times Square in New York City, August 16, 2021.

Jeenah Moon | Reuters

Covid cases are still on the rise in the U.S., but the pace of infections is showing signs of slowing, especially in some of the states that have been hit hardest by the delta variant.

Though cases have climbed to their highest level since January at an average of 152,000 per day over the last week, the pace of the rise in new infections has substantially slowed over the last two weeks, data compiled by Johns Hopkins University shows. New cases increased by 11% over the last week, almost a third of the seven-day jump of 30% just two weeks ago, according to the data.

A combination of the elevated level of recent cases along with the number of Americans who are vaccinated means the virus may now be finding fewer people to infect, according to Dr. Bruce Farber, chief of infectious disease at Northwell Health in Manhasset, New York. 

“All outbreaks have these peaks, and then as the percent of the population both gets infected as well as vaccinated, and it can be a combination of those things, you run out of fuel,” he said. “And in this case, the fuel is unvaccinated and uninfected people.”

The U.S. has seen a handful of peaks in cases throughout the course of the pandemic. Average daily cases topped out at about 32,000 in April 2020 before subsiding and then resurging to a new peak averaging 67,000 per day in July 2020. Many were hopeful the pandemic was contained last fall as average daily cases fell to around 34,000 just after Labor Day 2020 before the fall and winter holiday season drove a surge of Covid cases to a seven-day average of 251,000 cases per day in January. There was a steep drop-off after the holidays before the alpha variant from the U.K. started to drive another surge in cases in the U.S. to an average of 71,000 cases a day this last April.

Even if cases are nearing a new peak, it may still be some time before that’s apparent at local hospitals. Hospitalizations and deaths tend to lag case counts by a couple of weeks or more, as it takes time for people to become infected with the virus and then become sick enough to need urgent care.

The curve in nationwide hospitalizations may be bending. An average of more than 12,200 Americans were admitted to hospitals with Covid each day during the week ended Aug. 23, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data shows. That’s an increase of 6.6% from the week before, a smaller jump than has been seen in recent weeks.

The death toll, on the other hand, is still rising at a fast pace. Johns Hopkins data shows the country’s count of average daily deaths surpassed 1,100 as of Wednesday, up 39% from a week ago, driven by large and quickly rising fatalities reported by Florida, Texas, Louisiana and Georgia. 

Some of the states that experienced the earliest impacts of the delta variant’s spread are seeing cases decline or flatten out.

Louisiana, which had been leading the country in the number of population-adjusted daily cases for weeks until being surpassed by Mississippi recently, is now seeing some signs of relief. The state is recording a seven-day average of about 4,700 daily cases, down 10% from a week ago and 20% from its peak level of about 5,800 daily cases 10 days ago.

Alyson Neel, spokeswoman for the Louisiana Department of Health, said it’s too soon to know whether the outbreak in Louisiana has reached its peak.

“We can’t ignore that there’s some daylight in the cases, can’t ignore that there’s been at least several days now of decreased reports of Covid cases, and that’s really good,” Neel said. 

“I don’t know if we’d say we know whether or not we’ve peaked, but we sure are grateful for the small downtick in cases,” she added.

Though slowing case counts may indicate that the delta surge is finally approaching its apex, many states still face a flood of hospitalizations and deaths. The 139 deaths reported in Louisiana on Aug. 24 is the highest single-day total over the course of the pandemic, according to Johns Hopkins data.

Just under half of Louisiana’s intensive care beds were occupied by Covid patients as of Thursday, compared with 30% nationwide, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The surge is taxing health-care systems in Texas and Florida as well, where more than 50% of ICU beds are currently treating coronavirus cases, according to HHS.

“I certainly would hope that people don’t take declining case rates as a sign that we are truly out of the woods,” Dr. Barbara Taylor, an assistant dean and infectious disease professor at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, told CNBC. “There are so many other factors that we have to consider about how much strain this is putting on all of our systems and all of our health-care systems.”

Texas is recording an average of 16,970 daily cases, up 10% over the past week. That’s below the state’s record high of more than 23,000 daily cases set in mid-January, and showing some signs of easing, but the daily death toll in Texas has nearly quadrupled this month to an average of 153 per day.

In Florida, which is responsible for roughly 1 in 7 new U.S. cases, infection levels are more or less flat over the past week, though they are at pandemic highs. The state, which stopped reporting daily case numbers in May, said it had 150,740 new infections as of Friday, compared with 151,764 the prior week, and hospitals are strained to the point that the mayor of Orlando asked residents last week to cut back on water usage in order to preserve resources needed to combat the recent surge of Covid hospitalizations.

Florida’s fatalities, meanwhile, have climbed to a new seven-day peak of 1,486 deaths — its highest weekly total of the pandemic.

In Missouri, which saw a surge in cases starting in early July, daily cases have tumbled by 10% over the past week to an average of about 2,400 per day. But deaths are rising there, too, up 36% over the past week to an average of 35 daily deaths.

Infectious disease experts say the return to in-person learning for school and university students will pose another hurdle to slow the spread, with the potential for localized outbreaks this fall. However, there is a playbook for fighting the virus at this point in the pandemic, Taylor said.

“I think the answers are the same answers that they’ve been for a while: getting more people vaccinated, providing more access to vaccination for more people, and easy access to mobile clinics,” she said, adding that masking and social distancing from those in different households are still important tools.

“We know ways that we can reduce risk or mitigate risk both in schools and in work environments,” Taylor said. “But I think that in some places, that is going to be really challenging, and there is wide variation in practices within schools.”

SINGAPORE – It is important to know the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic – but that would not be possible without “radical and complete transparency,” said Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan.

“Let me speak as a scientist or as a doctor: what we need is radical and complete transparency. “Balakrishnan told CNBC’s” Squawk Box Asia “on Thursday.

“It is important, the etiology is important, not for political or diplomatic reasons – it is for the future. We need to know how these things happen, where the next outbreak will take place, what the likely dynamics of these future pandemics will be. ” he added.

Balakrishnan was a doctor before entering politics two decades ago. In May, the minister told CNBC that Covid is endemic and will not go away entirely – an assessment increasingly shared by governments and health officials around the world.

The virus that caused Covid infections first appeared in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late 2019.

An international team of scientists led by the World Health Organization said in February that the coronavirus “most likely” originated from animals before it spreads to humans. The WHO proposed a second phase of investigation to see if the virus could have escaped from a Chinese laboratory – but China rejected the plan.

In May, President Joe Biden gave US intelligence 90 days to continue investigating the origin of the virus and to report the results. The deadline was Tuesday. China also criticized Biden’s move and accused the US of scapegoating, Reuters reported.

Balakrishnan said it was “in the collective interest of all humanity” to know the origins of the virus.

“I just wish we could take the politics and rivalry between the superpowers out and focus only on science, health and people’s well-being,” the minister said.

Singapore is approaching 80% vaccination rate

Domestically, nearly 80% of Singapore’s 5.69 million residents have been fully vaccinated against Covid – and that has allowed the country to ease social distancing measures and ease border restrictions this month.

However, Balakrishnan said he was “very reluctant” to say the country had turned the tide. He warned that the situation could change and that requires “eternal vigilance”.

“Even at 80%, that’s still a million people without vaccines. And so … as we try to gradually and safely reopen society and reopen our borders, we are going to have quite a struggle to keep the numbers down, ”he said.

Singapore has adjusted social distancing measures several times in recent months as the more transferable Delta variant spreads across the city-state.

As of Wednesday, the Southeast Asian country has reported more than 66,800 Covid infections and 52 deaths, data from the Ministry of Health showed.