Charting the Global Economic Recovery from COVID-19 Vaccinations

Vaccines for the coronavirus illness (COVID-19) have offered hope for better limiting the pandemic, which had infected over 300 million people and killed over 5 million as of 13 Jan 2022. Currently, 19 economies in the area have approved at least one of these vaccinations, but the number of national approvals for accessible vaccines is projected to rise. This paper endeavors to quantify COVID-19's potential global economy under four different vaccination scenarios. The objective of the paper is to analyze the economywide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy, evaluate the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccinations towards economic recovery, and address vaccine inequity among the developing countries with high COVID-19 infection rates by utilizing a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model based on the Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) database. The model comprehends the economic interactions due to COVID-19 infection as well as vaccination rates based on the inter-regional and inter-industry relationships. This study showed the impact of the unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic on the global economy. Most of the impacts on their GDP were driven by the economic consequences of reduced labor supply and productivity in various economies. Moreover, our results propose that the COVID-19 vaccine strongly affects economic activity. When the vaccination rates hit much higher levels, people will be more comfortable returning to the new normal with substantial labor productivity gain across all industries. Labor participation and productivity are projected to increase significantly with higher vaccination rates. Relatively lower vaccination rates in some developing countries had shown a slowdown in overall global economic recovery.