The scale of human suffering in the COVID nightmare unfolding in India and other developing countries is hard for us to grasp in North America. But it has far-reaching implications.
Eighty-six percent of global humans live in emerging and developing economy countries that accounted for two-thirds of global GDP growth before the pandemic. Sixty-six percent of the revenue and 75% of global profits for publicly traded S&P 100 companies came from emerging market economies in 2019.
Moreover, India–the world’s sixth-largest economy and second most populous nation (1.3 bn people, behind China’s 1.4bn)–has been dubbed the “pharmacy to the world” and is being counted on to send millions of vaccines to us. See: India’s COVID crisis threatens the world’s Pandemic recovery:
The country’s exports and donations were a critical part of Covax, the World Health Organization’s global program to provide inoculations to low-income countries. When they all but dried up, it left many countries scrambling to find alternatives.
Given India’s growing strategic importance, the crisis risks not only the fledgling recovery in Asia’s third-largest economy, but attempts to tamp down Covid-19 and recuperate globally. Some scientists have linked India’s fresh wave to a more virulent strain, with the out-of-control outbreak providing a petri dish for further mutations to evolve that could challenge the vaccines now being distributed from Europe to the U.S.
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