IMF’s top economist says Covid vaccines are the ‘main weapon’ to achieve a faster economic recovery

IMF’s top economist says Covid vaccines are the ‘main weapon’ to achieve a faster economic recovery

LONDON “” With fears over "vaccine nationalism" steadily becoming a reality in 2021, experts have highlighted to CNBC why it's in everybody's interests to make sure adequately supplied inoculation programs are rolled out across the globe.  "Low- and middle-income countries have had the challenge of getting vaccines because of the phenomenon of vaccine nationalism. Most of the developed countries have a lot of the vaccines," Dr. Faisal Shuaib, CEO of Nigeria's National Primary Health Care Development Agency, told CNBC last month.Whereas high income nations have purchased more than 4.6 billion doses of Covid-19 vaccines, low income countries have bought 670 million doses, according to data from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center.And while many western economies, such as the U.K. and the U.S., hope to vaccinate the vast majority of their populations in the coming months, some countries might not be able to achieve that before 2024, according to the same institution."So, if we are going to eradicate Covid-19 as one global community than it is important that every community has access to these vaccines. The virus doesn't know any borders," Shuaib said.

Health concerns

The coronavirus is an infectious disease, easy to spread. The latest variants of the virus are said