Coronavirus vaccine roll-outs in the US and EU must speed up before it’s too late for the economy

Name: Coronavirus vaccine: UK grandmother is first person outside trials to get Pfizer Covid-19 shot
Uploaded: 2021-01-07T19:30:15.000Z
Duration: 1 min 55 s
Description: Coronavirus vaccine: UK grandmother is first person outside trials to get Pfizer Covid-19 shot

Vaccination campaigns across Britain and the US have been sluggish but are still making more headway than in the EU

The longer it takes to roll out mass immunisation programmes, the longer it will take economies to recover from lockdowns

Reading Time:3 minutes

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Dr Anthony Fauci, director of America’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, received his first dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at the National Institutes of Health, in Bethesda, Maryland on December 22. Photo: Reuters

Nicholas Spiro

Published: 3:30am, 8 Jan 2021Updated: 4:29am, 8 Jan 2021

Ever since Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech announced on November 9 last year that their Covid-19 vaccine was more than 90 per cent effective, marking a breakthrough in the battle against the pandemic, the world has been in a race between mass immunisation and the rapid increase in infections and fatalities.

In financial markets, particularly stock markets, the promise of a vaccine has been a crucial determinant of sentiment over the past several months, helping unleash animal spirits and brightening the outlook for the global economy.

As 2020 drew to a close, the overwhelming consensus among investment strategists was that the vaccine had set the stage for a period of stronger growth and rising asset prices.

However, in Europe and the United States – which are suffering a resurgence of the virus that is by almost any measure more severe than the first wave, partly due to the emergence of a more infectious variant of the disease – the distribution of vaccines and the administration of doses are proving more difficult than investors had anticipated.

While it is still early days for immunisation campaigns, and problems are magnified by intense scrutiny of data on the deployment of vaccines, the conspicuous failure to meet targets is a cause for concern. It is particularly worrying since the slow pace of the roll-out is only partly attributable to well-flagged logistical challenges.

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Coronavirus vaccine: UK grandmother is first person outside trials to get Pfizer Covid-19 shot

Heated debates over who should be getting the jab first, and whether dosing regimens should be changed to protect more people more quickly, risk undermining confidence in vaccines.

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