Effectiveness of the new Covid vaccine ..

With Russia having announced this week that they are ready with a new Covid vaccine, how is this vaccine and other competitors going to benefit humanity across the world ? 

The world it is said on an average loses almost $250 billion worth of productive value for each week of Corona virus impact. From mid March '20, when different parts of the world went into lockdown, we have lost about four trillion dollars of economic productive value around the world already. As per World Bank figures  global GDP for 2019 was $88 trillion. Given that the big impact may continue even to this December,  the economic loss could be another four trillion dollars, at the least.

Economist magazine healthcare and economics correspondents have through their vast exposure given to the world some facts about the vaccine.  Click here for video. 

Given that world vaccine manufacturing capacity is just about 2 billion annually, with some needing multiple doses, by mid 2021, we may cover just a billion of the population of the world which is presently 7.8 billion. This 1 billion would mostly be from the rich world. As per conservative estimates, it means herd immunity for 70% of global community, ie. 5 billion people, cannot come before 2025 AD.. This is scary..

Who should get preference in Covid 19 vaccination ?

First it should be given to the healthcare workers and Covid patients with equal importance.  Next are the social workers, third the vulnerable group, ie. the elderly and chronically ill people and lastly it should be given to the other people of the world.  Nobody can refute the fact that economic bias may result in a distortion in this distribution with the rich economies getting a major share. The developing nations are bound to suffer.

Should rich countries pay more for the vaccine to subsidize the costs to developing world  ? It would be better for governments to take the initiative than allow private philanthropy to gain the upper hand. The Global Alliance for Vaccines (GAVI) should take the global initiative in this direction.

The lead time to develop the vaccine in the first instance and the manufacturing lead time to make billions of doses available for the world is the reason for the economic slowdown of the world now. With information that almost ten variants of the gene  through mutation, is out, it remains to be seen how effective will the vaccine be to these multiple  strains. And that is going to add uncertainty to the effectiveness of the vaccine, if and when it gets successful.  

George