With the hope of new vaccines comes the urgent need to not only distribute them equitably around the world but to shore up global public health systems and mitigate the virus’ destabilizing global health and economic impacts to truly bring the pandemic under control. As new variations of COVID-19 spread around the globe, a growing public outcry reminds us that no one is safe until everyone is safe.

• Tony Fauci, Chief Medical Advisor to the President: “The only way we’re going to completely stop mutants is if we stop this throughout the world.” He added that this is “the reason why we want to make sure we’re part of a global community and we recently have joined COVAX… a consortium to get people vaccinated throughout the world.”

• Experts from the Peterson Institute on the emerging risk of COVID variants: “The truth is that the pandemic is not under control anywhere unless it is under control everywhere.” (Peterson Institute for International Economics)

• Erik Nielsen, chief economist at UniCredit Bank, says no corner of the world is immune: “So long as the pandemic terrorizes part of the world, normality will not be restored anywhere.” (Wall Street Journal)

• Jonathan Tepperman, Foreign Policy Editor in Chief warns, “the dangers of not acting to help the developing world cope with the pandemic are far greater than most Western policymakers seem to assume. While focusing exclusively on your own people during a crisis is tempting, leaders of rich countries need to realize that, even seen through that narrow lens, poorer countries demand their attention and their help—because without it, Western citizens are also bound to suffer.” (Foreign Policy)

• David Lawler, Axios World Editor, explains how COVID-19 variants emerging in any country pose a threat anywhere: “The outlook in wealthy countries depends in part on what happens in poorer ones, as new variants of the virus originating anywhere in the world could ultimately cause fresh international outbreaks.” (Axios)

Global impact by the numbers. In addition to more than 2.2 million lives lost around the world, COVID-19 has created massive humanitarian needs in developing countries, threatening progress on recent development gains from supporting women and girls to eliminating infectious diseases like malaria, Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.

• 235 million – The number of people around the world who will need humanitarian assistance in 2021, a 40% increase from 2020 as a result of the devastating impacts of COVID-19 (United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs)
• 160 million – The number of people who could be pushed into extreme poverty in 2021 due to COVID-19 (World Bank)
• 270 million – The number of people affected by a food crisis or emergency around the world (Reuters)
• 80 million – The number of children under the age of one who may miss out on receiving lifesaving vaccines for other diseases (WHO)
• 31 million – The number of additional cases of gender-based violence in 2020 (UNFPA)
• 24 million – The number of children are projected to drop out of school around the world (UNICEF)
• 94 million – The number of people at risk of missing their measles vaccinations as 26 countries paused vaccination campaigns due to COVID-19 (UN)
• 2.5 million – The number of additional girls at risk of child marriage due to the pandemic (Save the Children)
• 1 million – The number of excess deaths in Africa from Malaria, TB, and HIV/AIDS as a result of disruptions in programming due to COVID-19 (World Economic Forum)

Security, stability, and prosperity at stake.  In addition to tremendous impacts in the developing world, health security, global stability, and economic prosperity are at stake as the virus rages on.

• The IMF estimates that the COVID-19 pandemic will cost the global economy $28 trillion in lost output through 2025. In comparison, global health experts have called for investments of just $4.5 billion a year to bolster preparedness and prevent future outbreaks.

• As South African human rights lawyer Fatima Hassan said in the New York Times, “what you need right now is the explicit cooperation of every single government and every single pharmaceutical company.” She added, “we’ve got to share the technology and spend billions to save trillions.”

• According to a study commissioned by the International Chamber of Commerce, unequal vaccine distribution around the world could cost the global economy as much as $9 trillion, with wealthier countries experiencing more than half of the losses even if their own populations can be sufficiently vaccinated.

• Commenting on the recent study, experts at the Peterson Institute added that “the economic costs in rich countries could exceed the cost of helping poor countries get fully vaccinated by 10 to 100 times.” (Peterson)

• In a recent address to the UN Security Council, UN Secretary General António Guterres emphasized the links between rising global poverty and conflict, calling on the global community to act “early and preventively” and “address the root causes of conflict.”

• One forecast last year warned that thirteen countries are likely to experience new conflicts in the next two years due to the exacerbating effects of the pandemic (Foreign Policy).
  

The chief economist at the International Crisis Group, Tarek Ghani, warns in Foreign Affairs that “for poor countries, what comes next could be worse.” He writes that COVID-19 has more potential than SARS, H1N1, MERS, Ebola, and Zika all combined “to increase poverty, deepen social fractures, and intensify conflicts.”