It’s here? What? The vaccine, of course!
Vaccine watching has become a favorite hobby. Who can blame us? After eight months of life in a pandemic, we are all eager to get back to normal. So every bit of vaccine news is tracked like a package waiting to be delivered by Amazon.
There have been a number of events that deserve attention.
The UK drug regulator this week became the first to authorize the vaccine Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE for emergency use. The UK has ordered enough doses of the two-shot Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to immunize 20 million people, following a priority list. The approval has not come without dispute. Some like the American Anthony Fauci have suggested that the United Kingdom was quick to approve the vaccine.
However, the focus now shifts to the US, which is also likely to approve the Pfizer vaccine and one from Moderna, Bloomberg reported.
Back home in India, the movement toward a vaccine also continues. To add a touch of ‘Only in India’ to the process, Prime Minister Narendra Modi went on something of a ‘vaccine tour’ lately. On Friday, after a meeting of all parties, he said scientists should give the go-ahead to the vaccine “in a few weeks.”
Once that happens, a huge logistical challenge begins.
In a report last month, Credit Suisse had noted that India needs around 1.7 billion doses to vaccinate most adults and that it aims to deliver 400-500 million doses by July 2021. It added that there is sufficient capacity. of vaccine manufacturing, but the bottleneck of cold storage infrastructure will need to be overcome. Anand Rathi, in a report this week, said that India is in a reasonably good position with around 1.6 billion doses. The brokerage firm, like Credit Suisse, believes that the infrastructure for existing immunization programs can be used in conjunction with the capacity of the private sector.
More than us individuals trapped at home, policy makers are on the lookout for vaccines. The timing of the exit from emergency monetary and fiscal policies fundamentally depends on when the vaccine is widely available.
In India, for example, the central bank steered clear of any sign of exit in its latest review of the calendar year this week. This, despite high inflation. Thinkpad believes the policy tipping point will closely follow the vaccine, which could jumpstart consumer spending and confidence, providing an automatic stabilizer given the large accumulation of preventative savings.
That is not to say that the vaccine will solve all the economic hardships exposed by the pandemic.
Two of India’s most respected economic writers have pointed out that the recovery being seen so far is led by profits rather than wages. “Such a recovery will be tested in an economy with overcapacity,” Niranjan Rajadhyaksha wrote in Mint, explaining why wages matter. JPMorgan’s Sajjid Chinoy shared that concern. “The distribution of income between capital and labor runs the risk of becoming very skewed in favor of capital. Why does this matter? Aside from equity issues, this bodes ill for future demand, ”he wrote in the Indian Express.
Apologies for the gloomy weekend read. We’ll forgive you if you went halfway to watch cricket or plan a Covid-compliant end-of-the-year vacation. If you’re doing the latter, make sure you don’t fall for one of these vaccine tours!
Have a good weekend.
