Troy Stangarone is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.
Korea and global COVID vaccinations
By Troy Stangarone
Earlier this month, leaders of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, better known as Quad, comprising the United States, India, Australia, and Japan met via video conference to discuss challenges in the Indo-Pacific and how to respond to China. As part of the summit the leaders pledged to help provide vaccines to countries in the region as part of an effort to counter China's own vaccine diplomacy.
While South Korea wasn't part of the Quad's decision to provide vaccines in the Indo-Pacific, it can play an important role in helping to vaccinate populations in low- and middle-income countries.
When it comes to COVID-19 vaccines the focus is often on when they will be available for family members or how one's own country is doing in rolling out vaccines. That is only natural, but the pandemic won't truly be over until the rest of the world reaches herd immunity. The question is how to get there and at what cost.
While countries such as Israel and the United Arab Emirates have undertaken rapid vaccination programs, much of the world has only begun to be vaccinated and lacks the access to vaccines enjoyed by these and other wealthy countries.
According to Our World in Data, as of March 22 only 5.88 individuals per 100 globally had received a vaccine dose. With the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine only recently beginning to receive approval, at most only 2.44 percent of the world's population has been fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
While wealthy nations are expected to vaccinate their populations this year, for much of the world the wait will be longer. Most low- and middle-income countries are being vaccinated through the COVAX program, a part of the ACT-Accelerator, run by Gavi in partnership with the World Health Organization and others. Based on projections from late January, COVAX estimates that it will be able to vaccinate 27 percent of the populations in low- and middle-income countries by the end of the year.
Reaching herd immunity is expected to require vaccinating around 70 percent to 80 percent of populations. Estimates suggest that some countries may not be able to reach that level until 2022 or 2023. In the case of North Korea, it so far has only expressed an interest in vaccines from the COVAX program and will likely see an extended period for vaccination similar to other low-income countries.
Increasing the speed of vaccination is critical not just to public health, but also supporting the economic recovery from the pandemic. As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) pointed out in an interim report earlier this month, restoring economic growth to pre-pandemic levels is a race between inoculating populations and the development of new variants of the coronavirus.
New variants of the virus in Brazil and South Africa have already been shown to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccines that have been developed. Future mutations could become more difficult to contain if they weaken the effectiveness of existing vaccines further.
The economic costs from the pandemic have also been high. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the global economy contracted by 3.5 percent last year, more than twice the decline from the 2008 global financial crisis. South Korea's own efforts to deal with the pandemic, however, resulted in a moderate decline of 1.0 percent of GDP.
These declines would have been steeper without significant fiscal support from governments. The IMF estimated in January that global fiscal support to fight the pandemic has reached $14 trillion. That was before the passage of the Biden administration's $1.9 trillion stimulus package. South Korea's own stimulus efforts were around $244 billion in 2020.
In contrast to global stimulus spending, the ACT-Accelerator has a funding gap of $22.1 billion. In addition to providing vaccines, the ACT-Accelerator would provide needed funding for health systems, therapeutics and diagnostics in low- and middle-income countries. The cost of funding the ACT-Accelerator to end the pandemic more quickly pales in comparison to the cost of the pandemic itself.
The longer it takes to vaccinate the world's population, the more likely that populations will need to be revaccinated against new variants of the virus and the greater the economic costs.
This is where South Korea can play a productive role. Helping to fill the ACT-Accelerator funding gap and address the manufacturing challenges that come from increased vaccine demand will support the world in moving more quickly to herd immunity. Working to improve the ability of COVAX to supply vaccines to low- and medium-income countries will also help to speed the rate at which North Korea is vaccinated.
The Quad, China and Russia may be competing for influence through the distribution of vaccines, but what the world needs is leadership to vaccinate the global population as quickly as possible. In deepening its partnership with COVAX, South Korea could play an important role in achieving that goal, minimizing the risk of a deadlier variant of COVID-19 developing, supporting economic growth and ensuring that North Korea receives the vaccine help that is needed.
Troy Stangarone (ts@keia.org) is the senior director of congressional affairs and trade at the Korea Economic Institute.