COVID-19 and the Cost of Vaccine Nationalism

Short abstract

This article examines the global economic implications of COVID-19 vaccine nationalism and the associated inequitable access to vaccines across countries.

Abstract

Experience shows that, in response to pandemics, national governments tend to follow their own interests instead of pursuing a more globally coordinated approach. This nationalistic behaviour could have negative consequences on how well the COVID-19 global pandemic is managed and contained.

A situation in which countries push to get first access to a supply of vaccines, potentially hoarding key components for vaccine production, has been commonly referred to as ”vaccine nationalism.” This article examines how the management of the COVID-19 crisis may be affected by vaccine nationalism and what the associated economic cost would be of inequitable access to vaccines across countries.

COVID-19, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), publicly emerged in late December 2019 in the Chinese province of Wuhan and has since then rapidly spread to other countries in Asia, Europe, North America and the rest of the world. More than 30 million people worldwide are already confirmed to have been infected, and over 1 million have lost their lives. As well as the associated health burden, the COVID-19 outbreak has also caused substantial damage to the global economy.

Until there is a vaccine, or other treatment widely available, physical distancing, the use of face masks and test, track and trace will most likely be the only effective measures in the battle against the spread of the disease. There is an unprecedented global research effort ongoing to find a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2. Currently there are more than 165 vaccines being developed, with some already in human trials.

Experience from the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic suggests that in responding to such events, national governments tend to follow their own interests instead of pursuing a more globally coordinated approach. A situation where countries push to get first access to a supply of vaccines and potentially hoard key inputs for vaccine production has been commonly referred to as ‘vaccine nationalism’. A lack of global coordination and cooperation could have negative consequences for how well the global pandemic is managed and contained.

While international institutions such as the World Health Organization, the United Nations and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, among others, are trying to support the multilateral option to coordinate globally the COVID-19 vaccine effort, some of the world's leading economies such as the United States have been reluctant to commit and invest into these coordinated efforts.

In this study, we examine some of the negative consequences that vaccine nationalism could have in terms of how well we manage the pandemic in the future once a vaccine has been developed. Another objective is to understand the potential economic implications that could arise if countries follow a nationalistic behaviour with regard to the development, manufacturing and distribution of future COVID-19 vaccines. To this end, we use a macroeconomic model where all countries in the world are interlinked with each other through trade in goods and services as well as investment. The model allows us to put the world economy into a laboratory and run different “what-if” experiments, in order to examine what would happen to global economic output if no vaccine was developed or if only a few countries or regions managed to immunise their own populations.

Vaccine Nationalism Adversely Affects How Well the Public Health Crisis Can Be Managed

Vaccine nationalism can have several negative implications for the production and equitable distribution of potential vaccines across the world.

Firstly, the race observed between superpowers such as the US, China and Russia for who is going to develop a vaccine first could help to drive the successful development of potential vaccines. However, the geopolitical competition could also induce countries to speed up their trials and, to satisfy public demand, push for quicker and riskier regulatory approvals. If it transpires that some of these vaccines are not effective or have severe side-effects, that could further erode public trust in vaccines and complicate national vaccination plans.

Secondly, the current public focus is on the development of the vaccine. However, once there are safe and effective vaccine candidates available, they need to be produced and administered at scale. Vaccine manufacturing is a complex process. The infrastructure needed will depend on the type of vaccine developed and there is also the challenge that poorer countries may not have adequate systems to deliver and administer doses that have been manufactured in different environments, mostly found in the wealthier countries. Moreover, components for a vaccine usually come from different geographical locations that specialise in specific stages of the production process. A “nationalistic” approach to vaccine production could lead to global vaccine supply chains being interrupted if some countries hoard the key inputs, causing production delays.

Thirdly, in order to secure access to a vaccine, many governments, mostly from wealthier countries, have signed direct bilateral deals with producers of vaccine candidates in order to secure a stock for their own population. This patchwork of bilateral agreements could adversely affect pricing and availability of potential vaccines as wealthier countries bid for limited vaccine supplies. A “my nation first” approach could lead to an inefficient allocation of early available vaccines, potentially favouring individuals at less risk in high-income countries over high-risk individuals in poorer countries.

There are ongoing international efforts to coordinate a global COVID-19 response. These include the COVAX Facility, a cooperation between the WHO and other international institutions such as the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization, which aims to provide equal access to vaccines globally by pooling resources. However, these facilities have initially been suffering from weak commitments from wealthier countries. While the COVID-19 crisis is foremost a public health crisis, it's also an economic crisis, with national governments spending trillions of dollars on fighting the negative economic impact. But if the virus is not under control in all regions of the world, global economic demand will most likely still be impaired and global supply chains interrupted.

Without a Vaccine the Prolonged Economic Cost of COVID-19 Could Be Profound

Until there is a widely available vaccine for COVID-19, or any other treatment, physical distancing regulations and measures will continue to affect key sectors of the economy negatively, especially those that rely on close physical proximity between people. As part of our economic analysis, we therefore have modelled the impact on global GDP of reduced activity induced by physical distancing and changes in consumer behaviour in the following highly contact-intensive service sectors: (1) hospitality; (2) recreation; (3) retail and wholesale; (4) transportation; and (5) health and social care. In the analysis, we examine how GDP varies across several scenarios, which differ in their assumptions about which countries have access to a vaccine. We take as a benchmark for comparison a hypothetical baseline scenario where every country in the world manages to immunise sufficiently its population and physical distancing rules and regulations can be eased, allowing economic activity in contact-intensive sectors to gradually resume to levels experienced before the pandemic.

In one scenario, we examine how the world economy would evolve in the absence of vaccines that would sufficiently immunise populations against the virus and would allow the five contact- intensive sectors we model to come gradually back to normal activity. We estimate that, depending on the assumptions made about the impact of COVID-19 on contact-intensive service sectors, about $3.4 trillion globally in GDP terms could be lost annually, even in the absence of large-scale containment and closure measures as experienced during the first months of the pandemic in many countries. This corresponds to about 3.7 per cent of global GDP. Broken down by countries or regions, we estimate that the UK could lose about 4.3 per cent; the EU-27 about 5.6 per cent; and the US about 2.2 per cent of their annual GDP. The size of the effect varies across countries with regard to specific domestic demand and international trade conditions. For instance, the UK is a service-intensive economy and tourism is a very important sector for many countries within the EU-27. And even under the most conservative estimates, without a vaccine, the prolonged global GDP loss associated with lower economic activity in five highly contact- intensive service sectors is about $1.4 trillion annually, or 1.5 per cent of global GDP.

Even If Nationalistic Behaviour Is Inevitable, There Are Economic Incentives to Provide Access to Vaccines Across the Globe as Soon as Possible

In the economic analysis we examine scenarios which assume that some countries or regions miss out initially on access to vaccines. For instance, we estimate that if the countries that are currently actively developing a vaccine (e.g. USA, EU-27, UK, China, India and Russia) are successful in this endeavour and can inoculate a sufficiently large share of their population, the estimated loss for the world economy in GDP terms would reduce from 3.7 per cent to 1.3 per cent annually. However, 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, or approximately about $103bn a month.

Furthermore, in a separate scenario analysis, we show that even if only the lowest-income countries have no access to a COVID-19 vaccine initially, the global economy would still lose about $153bn a year. Under such a scenario, all high-income countries, as well as countries such as India, China and Russia, would still incur together an estimated GDP loss of about $119bn a year, or approximately about $10bn a month, compared to a scenario where all countries have access to a vaccine and can inoculate their populations sufficiently. Based on sensitivity analysis the estimate varies between $49bn to $230bn a year, or about $4bn to $19bn a month. That is, our economic analysis suggests that there are distinct benefits associated with ensuring that countries have equitable access to the vaccines that are being developed. It also suggests that wealthier countries could channel significant funds into facilities that try to pool resources for an equitable global access to vaccines, such as COVAX, without being economically worse off.

Even though $49bn–$230bn is a relatively small amount at face value, compared to what many countries currently are spending on government programmes to safeguard their economies during the pandemic, there is an economic incentive to provide access to vaccines to all as soon as possible. Previously, it has been estimated that the cost of procuring and delivering a safe and effective vaccine to the world's poorest countries would be about $25bn (Oxfam International, 2020). Based on this cost estimate, our findings would suggest that investing in access to COVID-19 vaccines for lower income countries represents a potentially sound strategy for wealthier countries, with a benefit-to-cost ratio of between 1.9 and 12.6; or in other words, every $1 invested would provide an approximate return of between $1.9 and $12.6, with a base case value estimate of $4.8.