#3 “Vaccine nationalism” with Hans Pung, president of RAND (Corporation) Europe - why is it beneficial for high-income countries to supply lower-income countries with the vaccine?

Last Week on Earth with GARI

Should vaccine producing countries supply lower-income countries with the vaccine? Why? How much will COVID19 cost the world if we provide an equitable distribution of the vaccine across countries and how much if just the ones that can afford them vaccinate? Freshly published fascinating report on the impact of COVID19 “vaccine nationalism” on the global economy.

RAND study (summary as well as entire study free): https://www.rand.org/randeurope/research/projects/cost-of-covid19-vaccine-nationalism.html

Key take-aways:

• The global cost associated with COVID-19 and its economic impact could be $3.4 trillion a year
• Even if the countries currently developing a vaccine are successful in inoculating a large portion of their populations the lack of access to vaccines for the rest of the world would still result in a GDP loss of about $1,232bn per year
• Based on previous estimates, it would cost $25 billion to supply lower-income countries with vaccines
• If high-income countries paid for the supply of vaccines, there could be a benefit-to-cost ratio of 4.8 to 1. So for every $1 spent, high-income countries would get back about $4.8
• The US, the UK, the EU and other high-income countries combined could lose about $119 billion a year if the poorest countries are denied a supply.
• COVAX - initiative to ensure equitable vaccine supplies across the globe. Over US$ 2 billion raised to support equitable access to COVID vaccines with a total of US$ 25 billion needed to support low to medium income countries

With this information - how is it possible that vaccine producing countries are still looking to act internally rather than pitch into globally equitable vaccinations?

RAND study recommendations:

1. Investing in vaccine development and equitable access would be economically beneficial in the long run.
2. To encourage international sharing of vaccines, we need enforceable frameworks for vaccine development and distribution, managed by established international forums.
3. The international effort to support vaccination distribution needs to be sustained over time.

RAND used a multi-country, multi-sector computable general equilibrium (CGE) model to quantify the potential global economic situation in a post-lockdown pre-vaccine COVID-19 world and then to assess the economic implications of inequitable access to COVID-19 vaccines between countries or global regions.

Writers of the study: Marco Hafner, Erez Yerushalmi, Clement Fays, Eliane Dufresne, Christian Van Stolk

RAND Corporation’s mission is to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis. It is one of the most, if not the

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