IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/oec/ecoaaa/1672-en.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The tortoise and the hare: The race between vaccine rollout and new COVID variants

Author

Listed:
  • David Turner
  • Balázs Égert
  • Yvan Guillemette
  • Jarmila Botev

Abstract

New variants of the virus are spreading which, together with seasonal effects, are estimated to be able to raise effective reproduction numbers by up to 90%. Meanwhile, many countries are rolling out vaccination programmes, but at varying speeds. Hence the race is on to beat the variants with the vaccines. Vaccination is very powerful at reducing virus transmission: fully vaccinating 20% of the population is estimated to have the same effect as closing down public transport and all-but-essential workplaces; fully vaccinating 50% of the population would have a larger effect than simultaneously applying all forms of containment policies in their most extreme form (closure of workplaces, public transport and schools, restrictions on travel and gatherings and stay-at-home requirements). For a typical OECD country, relaxing existing containment policies would be expected to raise GDP by about 4-5%. Quick vaccination would thus help limit the extent to which containment policies need to be escalated in future epidemic waves, providing huge welfare benefits both in terms of fewer infections and stronger economic activity.

Suggested Citation

  • David Turner & Balázs Égert & Yvan Guillemette & Jarmila Botev, 2021. "The tortoise and the hare: The race between vaccine rollout and new COVID variants," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1672, OECD Publishing.
    • Handle: RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1672-en
    DOI: 10.1787/4098409d-en
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1787/4098409d-en
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1787/4098409d-en?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro CARRARO & Lucia FERRONE & Margherita SQUARCINA, 2020. "Are COVID-19 Containment Measures Equally Effective in Different World Regions?," Working Papers - Economics wp2020_11.rdf, Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze per l'Economia e l'Impresa.
    2. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 124130, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    3. Mr. Pragyan Deb & Davide Furceri & Mr. Jonathan David Ostry & Nour Tawk, 2020. "The Effect of Containment Measures on the COVID-19 Pandemic," IMF Working Papers 2020/159, International Monetary Fund.
    4. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face masks considerably reduce COVID-19 cases in Germany," Publications of Darmstadt Technical University, Institute for Business Studies (BWL) 124587, Darmstadt Technical University, Department of Business Administration, Economics and Law, Institute for Business Studies (BWL).
    5. Mitze, Timo & Kosfeld, Reinhold & Rode, Johannes & Wälde, Klaus, 2020. "Face Masks Considerably Reduce COVID-19 Cases in Germany: A Synthetic Control Method Approach," IZA Discussion Papers 13319, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Kahanec, Martin & Lafférs, Lukáš & Schmidpeter, Bernhard, 2021. "The Impact of Mass Antigen Testing for COVID-19 on the Prevalence of the Disease," GLO Discussion Paper Series 775, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    7. Demirguc-Kunt,Asli & Lokshin,Michael M. & Torre,Ivan, 2020. "The Sooner, the Better : The Early Economic Impact of Non-Pharmaceutical Interventions during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9257, The World Bank.
    8. Blanco,Fernando Heber & Emrullahu,Drilona & Soto,Raimundo, 2020. "Do Coronavirus Containment Measures Work ? Worldwide Evidence," Policy Research Working Paper Series 9490, The World Bank.
    9. Fetzer, Thiemo & Graeber, Thomas, 2020. "Does Contact Tracing Work? Quasi-Experimental Evidence from an Excel Error in England," CEPR Discussion Papers 15494, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    10. Jonas E. Arias & Jesús Fernández-Villaverde & Juan F. Rubio-Ramírez & Minchul Shin, 2021. "Bayesian Estimation of Epidemiological Models: Methods, Causality, and Policy Trade-Offs," CESifo Working Paper Series 8977, CESifo.
    11. Sumedha Gupta & Kosali I. Simon & Coady Wing, 2020. "Mandated and Voluntary Social Distancing During The COVID-19 Epidemic: A Review," NBER Working Papers 28139, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Alexander Ahammer & Martin Halla & Mario Lackner, 2023. "Mass gatherings contributed to early COVID‐19 mortality: Evidence from US sports," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(3), pages 471-488, July.
    13. Thomas Tröger, 2020. "Optimal Testing and Social Distancing of Individuals With Private Health Signals," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2020_229, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    14. Caselli Francesca & Grigoli Francesco & Sandri Damiano, 2022. "Protecting Lives and Livelihoods with Early and Tight Lockdowns," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 22(1), pages 241-268, January.
    15. Michael Berlemann & Erik Haustein, 2020. "Right and Yet Wrong: A Spatio-Temporal Evaluation of Germany's Covid-19 Containment Policy," CESifo Working Paper Series 8446, CESifo.
    16. Francisco Arroyo-Marioli & Francisco Bullano & Simas Kucinskas & Carlos Rondón-Moreno, 2021. "Tracking R of COVID-19: A new real-time estimation using the Kalman filter," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(1), pages 1-16, January.
    17. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2020. "Productivity of Working from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from an Employee Survey," Discussion papers 20073, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    18. Stefan Pichler & Katherine Wen & Nicolas R. Ziebarth, 2021. "Positive Health Externalities of Mandating Paid Sick Leave," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(3), pages 715-743, June.
    19. Goolsbee, Austan & Syverson, Chad, 2021. "Fear, lockdown, and diversion: Comparing drivers of pandemic economic decline 2020," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 193(C).
    20. Matthew Olczak & J. James Reade & Matthew Yeo, 2020. "Mass Outdoor Events and the Spread of a Virus: English Football and Covid-19," Economics Discussion Papers em-dp2020-19, Department of Economics, University of Reading.
    21. MORIKAWA Masayuki, 2020. "Productivity of Working from Home during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from an Employee Survey (Japanese)," Discussion Papers (Japanese) 20034, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gächter, Martin & Huber, Florian & Meier, Martin, 2022. "A shot for the US economy," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 47(PA).
    2. Zhang, Zhiwei & Liu, Gao & Chen, Bin & Huang, Kun, 2022. "Social asset or social liability? How partisanship moderates the relationship between social capital and Covid-19 vaccination rates across United States counties," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 311(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Balázs Égert & Yvan Guillemette & Murtin Fabrice & David Turner, 2021. "Walking the Tightrope: Avoiding a Lockdown While Containing the Virus," CESifo Forum, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich, vol. 22(03), pages 34-40, May.
    2. Timo Mitze & Reinhold Kosfeld, 2022. "The propagation effect of commuting to work in the spatial transmission of COVID-19," Journal of Geographical Systems, Springer, vol. 24(1), pages 5-31, January.
    3. Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde & Charles I. Jones, 2020. "Macroeconomic Outcomes and COVID-19: A Progress Report," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 51(3 (Fall)), pages 111-166.
    4. Callaway, Brantly & Li, Tong, 2023. "Policy evaluation during a pandemic," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 236(1).
    5. Augusto Cerqua & Roberta Di Stefano, 2022. "When did coronavirus arrive in Europe?," Statistical Methods & Applications, Springer;Società Italiana di Statistica, vol. 31(1), pages 181-195, March.
    6. Demidova, Olga, 2021. "Methods of spatial econometrics and evaluation of government programs effectiveness," Applied Econometrics, Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA), vol. 64, pages 107-134.
    7. Austin L. Wright & Geet Chawla & Luke Chen & Anthony Farmer, 2020. "Tracking Mask Mandates during the COVID-19 Pandemic," Working Papers 2020-104, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.
    8. Timo Mitze & Reinhold Kosfeld & Johannes Rode & Klaus Wälde, 2020. "Face Masks Considerably Reduce Covid-19 Cases in Germany - A Synthetic Control Method Approach," CESifo Working Paper Series 8479, CESifo.
    9. Daniel L. Millimet & Christopher F. Parmeter, 2022. "COVID‐19 severity: A new approach to quantifying global cases and deaths," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 185(3), pages 1178-1215, July.
    10. Cooper, Daniel & Garga, Vaishali & Luengo-Prado, María José & Tang, Jenny, 2023. "The mitigating effect of masks on the spread of Covid-19," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 48(C).
    11. Yating Chuang & John Chung-En Liu, 2020. "Who wears a mask? Gender differences in risk behaviors in the COVID-19 early days in Taiwan," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 40(4), pages 2619-2627.
    12. Zhen Zhu & Enzo Weber & Till Strohsal & Duaa Serhan, 2020. "Sustainable Border Control Policy in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Math Modeling Study," Papers 2008.13561, arXiv.org, revised Feb 2021.
    13. Bonander, Carl & Ekman, Mats & Jakobsson, Niklas, 2022. "Vaccination nudges: A study of pre-booked COVID-19 vaccinations in Sweden," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 309(C).
    14. Roy Cerqueti & Raffaella Coppier & Alessandro Girardi & Marco Ventura, 2022. "The sooner the better: lives saved by the lockdown during the COVID-19 outbreak. The case of Italy [Using synthetic controls: Feasibility, data requirements, and methodological aspects]," The Econometrics Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 25(1), pages 46-70.
    15. Benjamin Born & Alexander M Dietrich & Gernot J Müller, 2021. "The lockdown effect: A counterfactual for Sweden," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(4), pages 1-13, April.
    16. Florian Dorn & Sahamoddin Khailaie & Marc Stoeckli & Sebastian C. Binder & Tanmay Mitra & Berit Lange & Stefan Lautenbacher & Andreas Peichl & Patrizio Vanella & Timo Wollmershäuser & Clemens Fuest & , 2023. "The common interests of health protection and the economy: evidence from scenario calculations of COVID-19 containment policies," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 24(1), pages 67-74, February.
    17. Seres, Gyula & Balleyer, Anna & Cerutti, Nicola & Friedrichsen, Jana & Süer, Müge, 2020. "Face mask use and physical distancing before and after mandatory masking: Evidence from public waiting lines," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Economics of Change SP II 2020-305, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    18. Zhang, Yue-Jun & Cheng, Hao-Sen, 2021. "The impact mechanism of the ETS on CO2 emissions from the service sector: Evidence from Beijing and Shanghai," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 173(C).
    19. Landsgesell, Lukas & Stadler, Manfred, 2020. "The spread of COVID-19 in Germany: An application of the SIRDH model," University of Tübingen Working Papers in Business and Economics 139, University of Tuebingen, Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences, School of Business and Economics.
    20. Peter Flaschel & Giorgos Galanis & Daniele Tavani & Roberto Veneziani, 2021. "Pandemics and aggregate demand: A framework for policy analysis," CAMA Working Papers 2021-12, Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    COVID; lockdown; reproduction number; Sars-Cov-2; vaccine; variant; weekly tracker;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • E61 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Policy Objectives; Policy Designs and Consistency; Policy Coordination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oec:ecoaaa:1672-en. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edoecfr.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.