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Why Covid vaccine producer India faces main scarcity of doses

Why Covid vaccine producer India faces major shortage of doses

People aged 18 and over waiting to be vaccinated against Covid-19 at a vaccination center on the Radha Soami Satsang site operated by BLK Max Hospital on May 4, 2021 in New Delhi, India.

Hindustan Times | Hindustan Times | Getty Images

With the devastating second wave of the coronavirus pandemic in India, questions are being asked how the country where the world’s largest vaccine maker is based got to this tragic point.

India continues to report massive numbers of new infections. Tuesday passed the grim milestone of having reported over 20 million Covid cases and at least 226,188 people have died from the virus, although the reported death toll is believed to be lower than the real death toll.

Meanwhile, India’s vaccine program is struggling to make an impact and supplies are problematic, despite the country halting vaccine exports in March to focus on domestic vaccination.

The sharp rise in infections in India since February has been attributed to permission for a major religious festival and election campaigns, as well as the spread of a more contagious variant of the virus. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling Bharatiya Janata party have been criticized for a lack of caution and willingness, and accused of placing politics and campaigning above public safety.

There was also a war of words over the government’s vaccination strategy. The ruling legislature has been criticized for allowing millions of cans to be exported earlier this year.

So far India has administered around 160 million doses of a coronavirus vaccine (the predominant shots used are the AstraZeneca vaccine, made locally as Covishield, as well as a domestic vaccine developed by Bharat Biotech called Covaxin). Russian vaccine Sputnik V was approved for use in April and the first batch of doses arrived in early May, although it has not yet been used.

So far, only 30 million people in India have received full two doses of a Covid vaccine, government data shows. That is a small number (just over 2 %%) of India’s total population of 1.3 billion people – although around a quarter of that population is under the age of 15 and as such cannot yet receive a vaccine.

As of May 1, everyone aged 18 and over has been eligible for a Covid vaccine, although this expansion of the vaccination program has been hampered by dose constraints across the country reported by national media across the country.

People get their Covid-19 vaccines from medical professionals at a vaccination center set up in the classroom of a state school in New Delhi, India on May 4, 2021.

Getty Images | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Dr. Chandrakant Lahariya, a New Delhi-based doctor who is also an expert on vaccines, public policy and health systems, told CNBC on Wednesday that India’s large adult population is making vaccination efforts difficult.

“Even if the proposed supply was available, India opened vaccination to a far larger population than any vaccine framework can possibly expect. This is essentially the result of limited supply and a vaccination policy that ignores supply becomes.” No forward planning could have ensured the kind of care that is needed now with the opening of vaccination for 940 million people in India, “he said.

It is “unlikely that vaccine supplies will change drastically,” Lahariya said. “India takes between 200 and 250 million doses per month to reach full capacity of the Covid-19 vaccine engines and it has around 70 to 80 million doses per month. It is clear that there is a long way to go to get these Kind of care to achieve. ” ,” he noticed.

Vaccine wars

The shortcomings in vaccine supply have inevitably led to a diversion of blame with vaccine manufacturers in the line of fire. Questions about vaccine prices, production capacity and the destination of shipments have preoccupied the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer, Serum Institute of India, and Bharat Biotech, the Hyderabad-based pharmaceutical company that makes Covaxin.

Both had criticized their vaccine price structures (i.e. different prices for doses intended for central government, state governments and private hospitals), which prompted the CEO of the SII to lower prices later as part of a public backlash.

Adar Poonawalla, CEO of the SII, which makes the Covid vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and Oxford University, said Sunday the institute had been blamed for a vaccine shortage and scapegoated by politicians, but said it was due to capacity an initial did not increase sooner lack of orders.

“I have been a very unfair and unjustified victim,” he told the Financial Times on Monday, adding that he had not increased capacity earlier because “there were no orders, we didn’t think we were more than 1 billion Doses a year. “

Poonawalla noted that the Indian government ordered 21 million doses of Covishield from the Serum Institute in late February, but did not specify when or if it would buy more, and ordered an additional 110 million doses in March as infections began to rise.

People wearing protective face masks wait to receive a dose of Covishield, a coronavirus vaccine made by the Serum Institute of India, at a vaccination center in New Delhi, India on May 4, 2021.

Anadolu Agency | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Poonawalla said Indian authorities did not expect to face a second wave of cases and, as such, were not prepared for the onslaught of new infections in late winter.

He said the shortage of vaccine doses in the country will continue until July, when production is expected to increase from around 60 to 70 million doses per month to 100 million.

For its part, the Indian government insists on ordering more vaccines to meet demand. On Monday the government issued a statement rejecting media reports claiming it had not placed new orders for Covid vaccines since March, stating that “these media reports are completely false and not based on facts” . It said it had provided money to both SII and Bharat Biotech for vaccines, which are due to be delivered in May, June and July.

On Tuesday, Poonawalla issued a statement attempting to calm tensions between the government and SII. He stated that “the production of vaccines is a specialized process and it is therefore not possible to ramp up production overnight”.

“We also need to understand that India’s population is huge and it is not an easy task to produce enough doses for all adults … We have been working with the Indian government since April last year. We have all kinds of support, be it scientific , regulatory and financial, “he said. Poonawalla said the SII has received total orders over 260 million cans without disclosing buyers.

When asked if the government had misunderstood its approach to vaccine sourcing and production, Lahariya noted that the government had become complacent, even though it was difficult to predict the course of the pandemic.

“To be fair, I think there were two surprises. Unlike a year ago when the availability of Covid-19 vaccines was projected around mid-2021, the vaccine became available a little earlier. Second, the lull in Covid-19- Cases in India has ceased complacency at all levels, “he noted. Lahariya added that many months were spent prioritizing the target population for vaccination, then opening the program “too early” to all adults.

“It was an issue of hasty and arguably politically influenced planning, while it was essentially supposed to be a public health decision. So a written plan detailing various aspects, such as the forecast of care, could have made all the difference. “

Modi’s future

How the vaccination strategy will affect Modi’s ratings over the long term remains to be seen. However, there is already evidence that Modi’s ruling BJP will have to pay for the Covid crisis in the elections.

Modi’s party failed to win the key state of West Bengal in a regional election last weekend and failed to win three other state elections in April, despite retaining power in the state of Assam.

Dr. Manali Kumar of the Department of Political Science at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland noted: “This second wave is a disaster caused by the complacency of the Indian government, which is now preoccupied with controlling the narrative rather than addressing the problem. ” “”

“Perhaps the worst disaster currently unfolding in India could have been avoided if restrictions on public and private gatherings had remained in place,” she noted, adding that “decades of neglect of investment in health infrastructure and an electorate Those who did not do this are also to blame for prioritized public services. “

Prime Minister Modi defended the government’s vaccination strategy, telling ministers in April that “those who are in the habit of politics (playing) allow it … I have received various allegations. We cannot stop those who do this to do.” We really want to serve humanity, which we will continue to do, “he said, the Times of India reported.

He also noted that an earlier peak of infections had been controlled this past September at a time when vaccines were not available and cases and mass tests were being tracked and followed.

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Health

Pfizer Will Search Approval to Give Covid Vaccine to Youngsters

Pfizer Will Seek Approval to Give Covid Vaccine to Children

Pfizer is expected to apply to the Food and Drug Administration for emergency clearance to administer its coronavirus vaccine to children ages 2-11 in September, the company told Wall Street analysts and reporters on Tuesday during its quarterly call for profits.

The company also plans to file for full approval of the vaccine this month for people ages 16 to 85. Clinical study data on the safety of his vaccine in pregnant women should be available by early August.

The Pfizer BioNTech vaccine will be given to adults as part of an emergency clearance the companies received in December. Obtaining full FDA approval would, among other things, enable the companies to commercialize the vaccine directly to consumers. The approval process is expected to take months.

“Full approval is a welcome indicator of the continued safety and effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine,” said Saskia Popescu, an infectious disease epidemiologist at George Mason University, in an email. It could also “build further confidence in the importance of vaccination,” she said.

The Pfizer BioNTech coronavirus vaccine was the first to receive emergency approval in the United States. Emergency permits are temporary and can be revoked once a public health emergency has ended.

Full approval would allow the vaccine to stay in the market when the pandemic wears off. This can also make it easier for businesses, government agencies, schools, and other institutions to request a vaccination. For example, the University of California and California State University school systems have announced that after coronavirus vaccines are fully FDA approved, students, faculties, and staff will need to be vaccinated. The U.S. military, where many troops have turned down coronavirus vaccines, has said it wouldn’t make them mandatory as long as they only have an emergency permit.

The FDA is expected to issue emergency approval early next week to allow the vaccine to be used in children ages 12-15.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said at a news conference Tuesday that she does not want to be ahead of the FDA but that the government is preparing to “make this available to additional, younger populations.”

Dr. Popescu said the opportunity to allow children in the United States to use the vaccine was both exciting and frustrating. “We have key people around the world who cannot get vaccines and countries that may not have access for a year or more, so we need to add global access to this conversation,” she said.

As of Tuesday, more than 131 million doses of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine had been administered in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They make up just over half of all doses administered in the country to date.

Pfizer’s managing director, Dr. Albert Bourla said the company reached out to the FDA on Friday with new data to convince the agency that the vaccine can be stored at refrigerator temperatures and not frozen for up to four weeks. Currently the limit is five days. He said the company was working on an updated version of the vaccine that could potentially be refrigerated for up to 10 weeks and hoped to have supportive data for that by August.

Rebecca Robbins contributed to the coverage.

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Politics

Pfizer Reaps Lots of of Hundreds of thousands in Income From Covid Vaccine

Pfizer Reaps Hundreds of Millions in Profits From Covid Vaccine

Several factors explain the inequality in Pfizer’s vaccine distribution.

The shot, which must be stored and transported at very low temperatures, is less practical for hard-to-reach parts of the world than other shots such as those from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson that can simply be refrigerated. Some poor countries were not hit badly by the virus initially, so their governments had less urgency to place orders for the Pfizer vaccine as far as they could afford to pay for the shots.

“Not everyone was interested in the vaccine or willing to take steps. As a result, talks will continue, including working with Covax beyond the original 40 million cans, ”said Ms. Castillo, Pfizer spokeswoman.

In India, where the virus is spiraling out of control, the Pfizer vaccine is not used. The company applied for an emergency permit there, but withdrew the application in February because the Indian Medicines Agency was unwilling to waive the requirement to conduct a local clinical trial. At the time, India’s coronavirus case numbers were manageable and vaccines made locally were considered sufficient.

Pfizer and the Government of India have since resumed talks. On Monday, Mr Bourla said the company would donate more than $ 70 million worth of drugs to India and is trying to expedite vaccine approval.

Pfizer has made public promises to run its business not only for the enrichment of shareholders but also for the betterment of society.

Mr. Bourla, who earned $ 21 million last year, was among the 181 leaders of large companies who signed a 2019 Business Roundtable pledge to focus on a range of “stakeholders” including workers, suppliers and local communities – not just investors.

The financial numbers Pfizer reported Tuesday underestimate how much money the vaccine will generate. Pfizer is splitting its vaccine sales with BioNTech, which will publish its own first quarter results next week. BioNTech announced in March that it had achieved sales of nearly 10 billion euros, or around 11.8 billion US dollars, based on the vaccine orders it had ordered at the time.

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Health

With Covid Vaccines for Teenagers and Youngsters, Timing Issues

With Covid Vaccines for Teens and Kids, Timing Matters

“In the end, this will be very good for vaccines as so much emphasis has been placed on the process, safety and verification,” said Dr. Campbell.

“I don’t think people in the past have realized how closely they look at the response to a vaccine,” said Dr. Campbell, or how much attention is paid to the timing, dose, and immune response of a new vaccine, is tested.

When it comes to the Covid vaccines, Dr. Maldonado: “We are not unduly concerned about anything about this vaccine, we are just following normal processes.”

Still, it’s possible that younger children, who usually have more robust immune systems than adults, may be more responsive to the Covid vaccines. For this reason, vaccine studies in children carefully examine dosage and immunological reactivity. Dr. Beers said, “They often start with a smaller group, give a lower vaccine dose, test the response, and work their way up to the dose necessary for an appropriate dose of immunity.”

Dr. Campbell and his colleagues in Maryland are just starting their first study of Covid vaccines in children under the age of 12. And no one should try to convince parents that the vaccines are safe and effective in this age group until the data are available: “I have no reason to believe that they are not safe and effective, but the evidence is in Pudding – I want to see the pudding. “

It makes sense to convince children of their regular vaccinations as it will protect them well if other diseases flare up after the pandemic lowered the rate of usual childhood vaccinations. Doctors are concerned about a whole list of vaccine-preventable diseases, including measles, whooping cough, meningitis, HPV, and flu.

Do Covid vaccines eventually fit into the routine vaccination schedule for children, and if so, at what age? Since the new vaccines are still in an emergency approval phase: “Nobody has answers; We have to see the passage of time, ”said Dr. Maldonado.

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Health

WHO is carefully monitoring 10 Covid variants as virus mutates world wide

WHO is closely monitoring 10 Covid variants as virus mutates around the world

Mukesh Bhardwaj cries as he sits next to his wife, who is receiving free oxygen support for people with respiratory problems, outside a Gurudwara (Sikh temple) amid the spread of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Ghaziabad, India. May 3, 2021.

Adnan Abidi | Reuters

The World Health Organization is tracking 10 variants of coronavirus “of concern” or “worrying” around the world, including two that were first discovered in the US and one triple mutant that is wreaking havoc in India as a potential global threat to the world public health.

New strains of Covid-19 emerge every day as the virus continues to mutate, but only a handful make the WHO official watch list an “variant of interest” or the more serious term “variant of concern” which is commonly defined as a mutated strain that is more contagious, more deadly, and more resistant to current vaccines and treatments.

The organization has identified three strains as variants of concern: B.1.1.7, which was first detected in the UK and is currently the most common strain in the US; B. 1.351, detected for the first time in South Africa, and the P.1 variant, detected for the first time in Brazil.

An interesting variant is the B.1617 variant or the triple mutated strain that was first found in India. However, WHO technical lead on Covid-19, Maria Van Kerkhove, said more studies are needed to fully understand its significance.

“There are actually a number of virus variants that are being discovered around the world and that we must all properly assess,” said Van Kerkhove. Scientists are studying how much each variant circulates in local areas, whether the mutations change the severity or transmission of the disease, and other factors, before being classified as a new public health threat.

“The information comes quickly and furiously,” she said. “There are new variants being identified and reported every day, not all of which are important.”

Other variants classified as variants of interest include B.1525, which was first detected in the UK and Nigeria; B.1427 / B.1429, recorded for the first time in the USA; P.2, first discovered in Brazil; P.3, first discovered in Japan and the Philippines; S477N, first detected in the USA, and B.1.616, first detected in France.

Van Kerkhove said the classifications are determined, at least in part, by sequencing capabilities, which vary from country to country. “It’s been really sketchy so far,” she said.

She said the agency is also viewing local epidemiologists as an extension of the agency’s “eyes and ears” to better understand the local situation and identify other potentially dangerous variants.

“It is important that we have the right discussions to determine which ones are important to the public health value. This means that doing so changes our ability to use public health social measures or any of our medical countermeasures.” , she said.

“We’re getting the right people together in the room to discuss what these mutations mean,” she said. “We need the global community to work together, and they are.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also have a list of four variants of interest and five variants of concern that is similar to the WHO list, although the CDC mainly focuses on variants that are causing new outbreaks in the United States.

Van Kerkhove said a number of countries “have some worrying trends, some worrying signs of rising case numbers, increasing hospitalization rates and increasing ICU rates in countries that do not yet have access to the vaccine and that have not achieved the required levels of coverage.” really having these effects on serious illness and death and transmission. “

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New Jersey to present free beer to Covid vaccine recipients

New Jersey to give free beer to Covid vaccine recipients

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy speaks at a press conference after touring the vaccination site at the New Jersey Convention and Exposition Center Covid-19 in Edison, New Jersey on January 15, 2021.

Mark Kauzlarich | Bloomberg | Getty Images

New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy announced a new offer on Monday to promote coronavirus vaccinations: get your first dose in May and get a free beer.

“We’re not going to be afraid to try new things,” said Murphy as he presented the new program, called “Shot and a Beer”, at a press conference.

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Thirteen New Jersey-based breweries are participating in the program, which Murphy says is only available to citizens 21 and older.

These New Jerseyers must show their vaccination cards as evidence before receiving their reward, the Democratic governor said.

The breweries themselves pay for the cost of the free drinks, said Murphy, who suggested that more beer makers could be added to the list soon.

The breweries currently participating are: Battle River Brewing, Bradley Beer Project, Bolero Snort Brewing Company, Brix City Brewing Company, Carton Brewing Company, Flounder Brewing Company, Flying Fish Brewing Company, Gaslight Brewery and Restaurant, Hackensack Brewing Company, Kane Brewing Company, Little Dog Brewing Company, Magnify Brewing Company, and River Horse Brewing Company.

The program came from the New Jersey Department of Health in association with the Brewer’s Guild of New Jersey.

The Garden State is hardly the first to suggest an incentive for people to get vaccinated.

West Virginia Republican Governor Jim Justice announced an initiative last week to give $ 100 savings bonds to younger citizens who get vaccinated.

Connecticut has its own alcoholic incentive with its “Drinks On Us” campaign: residents who get fully vaccinated and show their vaccination cards at certain restaurants will receive a free drink between May 19 and 31.

Incentive or no, vaccination rates are increasing. More than 29% of the US population is fully vaccinated, and cases and deaths from Covid are declining, according to Johns Hopkins University.

But a significant number of Americans say they are not ready to get vaccinated. A survey by Monmouth University published in mid-April found that roughly one in five Americans said they didn’t get the shot.

This is causing health officials and leaders at all levels of government to urge more people to seek and get their vaccinations.

The “Shot and a Beer” campaign is just part of New Jersey’s broader programs aimed at bringing the state back to a more normal summer as the fight against the pandemic continues.

Murphy announced the free beer plan after detailing the “Grateful for the Shot” initiative, which allows parishioners to walk straight to vaccination sites from church services.

It’s “maybe on the other end of the spectrum” of incentives, Murphy said.

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Florida governor DeSantis suspends all remaining Covid restrictions

Florida governor DeSantis suspends all remaining Covid restrictions

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis speaks wearing his face mask about the rise in coronavirus cases in the state during a press conference at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami on July 13, 2020.

Chandan Khanna | AFP | Getty Images

WASHINGTON – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed an executive order on Monday suspending immediately all pending local Covid-19 emergency orders and related public health restrictions.

“The fact is that we are no longer in a state of emergency,” DeSantis said during a press conference. He conceded that Florida was not finished with its fight against the coronavirus, but reiterated the nation’s decline in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

“I think that’s the evidence-based thing,” DeSantis said, adding that asking vaccinated people to continue wearing masks would undermine confidence in the coronavirus vaccine.

Private businesses may still require masks and enforce social distancing and other protective measures.

DeSantis signed a draft law on Monday that will bring the implementing regulation into effect on July 1st. The implementing regulation is designed to close the gap by then. The move, which is effectively ending all local restrictions related to pandemics, also bans vaccination certificates.

Florida has reported the third most common Covid-19 cases in the US with more than 2.2 million since the pandemic began and the fourth highest death toll with more than 35,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. However, the average number of new cases there has dropped more than 13% in the past week and dropped to 4,885 according to data on Sunday.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Last week, the Biden government announced a relaxation of federal health guidelines on wearing masks outdoors.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend that fully vaccinated individuals can exercise outdoors and attend small gatherings without a face mask. The agency also recommends that fully vaccinated individuals wear a mask in crowded outdoor areas.

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This is why it’s necessary to get second Covid shot

Here's why it’s important to get second Covid shot

Dr. Scott Gottlieb said Monday he was not yet concerned about the number of Americans who missed their planned second dose of Covid vaccine.

“We’re not sure if these people will come back anytime. They just didn’t come back on time,” said the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner in an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box.

However, Gottlieb said receiving the second Covid shot is necessary to receive the full protective benefits of the vaccines for months to come. Pfizer and Moderna vaccines require two shots. (Johnson & Johnson’s Covid vaccine, the third emergency approved in the US, only takes a single dose.)

“My advice to anyone would be that we don’t know the shelf life of this response, even if you are young and there is evidence that you are already starting to derive a robust immune response with that first dose,” said Gottlieb, who sits at Pfizer’s Tafel. “If you really want the vaccine to work over the long term, you really should get the second dose.”

On Friday, the White House chief medical officer, Dr. Anthony Fauci that approximately 8% of US citizens who received the first dose of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines did not come back for the second shot.

“The number of people who have not yet returned to the second dose is low compared to historical standards or historical norms,” ​​said Gottlieb, who headed the FDA in the Trump administration from 2017 to 2019. For example, he said, the response rate for the Covid vaccine is better than for the two-dose shingles vaccine.

Gottlieb admitted that it is possible that a higher percentage of US vaccine recipients could skip the second shot if more young people get the shot. This is partly because “younger people know they can derive a more robust immune response from just the first dose than older people, who really need that second dose to get full immune protection,” he repeated.

People who haven’t yet returned for the second shot aren’t necessarily doing anything wrong on purpose, Gottlieb added. He praised the pharmacies that deliver vaccines for “trying to implement reminders for these patients.”

“Often it is only lost for tracking. It is not people who purposely do not come back,” said Gottlieb. “There are some situations I’ve spoken to people who are worried about the second dose, the side effects supposedly associated with the second dose compared to the first dose. But right now the percentage of people who came back are because this second shot is pretty high. “

Nearly 105 million people in the United States, nearly a third of the population, have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to CDC data, about 147 million, or about 44% of the US population, received at least one dose.

Disclosure: Scott Gottlieb is a CNBC employee and a member of the boards of directors of Pfizer, genetic testing startup Tempus, health technology company Aetion Inc., and biotech company Illumina. He is also co-chair of the Healthy Sail Panel for Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings and Royal Caribbean.

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Class and Covid: A Key Hyperlink in Layoffs Worldwide

Class and Covid: A Key Link in Layoffs Worldwide

In the United States and many other countries, lower-income, lower-educated adults are harder hit economically by the coronavirus pandemic.

The relationship between class and Covid-19 isn’t inevitable, however: it doesn’t exist in some of the most egalitarian societies in Europe and Asia, according to a new Gallup global survey conducted from July 2020 to March 2021.

Globally, 41 percent of workers in the poorest 20 percent of their county’s income distribution said they had lost their job or business due to the pandemic, compared with 23 percent of workers in the richest 20 percent. This job loss gap is similar between those with a college degree (16 percent who lost a job or company) and those without (35 percent).

The gap in economic vulnerability is closely related to the prevailing income inequality that has accompanied the pandemic. In the economically most egalitarian countries (as measured by the Gini coefficient for household income), workers with lower incomes and lower levels of education were protected from mass unemployment, including through national measures to prevent job loss.

Public health experts have long understood that socioeconomic status is closely related to health outcomes and susceptibility to infectious diseases. Some countries – including the US, England and France – have found that Covid-19 has resulted in higher deaths in low-income communities, as well as blacks and some ethnic minorities.

Most of these gaps appear to be due to work-related exposures rather than non-compliance with safety guidelines. Black people in the United States are more likely than whites to report social distancing and mask use, but at the start of the pandemic, they were about 30 percent more likely to work in jobs that required close physical proximity. This is evident from research to be published in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

The earnings gap is even wider: workers in the bottom third of the income distribution were four times more likely than workers in the top 10 percent to be in a job that required close physical proximity. With the exception of doctors and a few other professions, highly skilled workers rarely need to be in direct contact with other people.

The overexposure of low-income workers to personal and personal work has created a twofold risk for the less affluent: increased threats of physical and economic harm. For example, in the United States, the unemployment rate of food preparation and service workers rose from 5.5 percent to 19.6 percent from 2019 to 2020 as people stopped eating out.

Around the world, lockdowns and social distancing have destroyed lower-income jobs that require less education. In 103 of 117 countries in Gallup’s World Poll data, workers in the bottom quintile of household income distribution had significantly higher job loss rates than those in the top. University graduates fared significantly better than graduates with less than 16 years of education in 97 out of 118 countries and territories.

Updated

May 3, 2021, 6:22 p.m. ET

Ungraduate workers in low-income countries fared worst, although they tended to live in areas with much lower Covid-19 fatalities during the survey period than in high-income countries in Europe and North America . More than two in three non-college workers lost their jobs or business as a result of Covid-19 in the Philippines and Kenya, even though the per capita death rate was 7 percent and 2 percent of the United States, respectively.

More than half of those without a university degree lost their jobs in Zimbabwe, Thailand, Peru and India. The rate of job or business loss among workers with a university degree in these countries was at least 10 percentage points lower.

While the economic damage has generally been worse in low-income countries, the United States is distinguished among high-income democracies by high job losses and a wide gap between those with and without college degrees. Of the 31 OECD member countries with data, the United States had the third largest gap in job loss between college graduates and non-holders, after Chile and Israel (eight percentage points).

Chile, Israel and the United States also share the difference that they have high levels of income inequality. More egalitarian countries – including France, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany – kept job losses low overall and did not see a significant gap in job loss rates between those with and without university degrees.

Globally, pre-pandemic income inequality predicted significantly higher job losses and a greater role for socio-economic status in shaping those job losses. The effect of inequality remains significant even after controlling for the cumulative per capita deaths from Covid-19 and the rigor of government policies to suppress disease and other factors that vary from country to country, as measured by Oxford University scientists.

More egalitarian countries tend to have more trusting populations, research shows, and create conditions that seem to lead to cooperation and effective collective action.

It is possible that elected officials in more egalitarian countries are more likely to develop measures to protect workers from dismissal – as is the case in Denmark, the Netherlands and New Zealand, which are in the lower quintile of global inequality measures, as well as Ireland, Australia and Great Britain, which are in the second lowest quintile in inequality.

These guidelines directed income support to companies affected by the pandemic in order to maintain their workforce. Other more egalitarian countries – such as France, Germany and Switzerland – have used and expanded existing employer subsidy programs to keep workers loyal to employers.

No such guidelines were issued in Chile or Israel while the US government launched the Paycheck Protection Program. This program shared features with successful European policies, but came too late to prevent mass layoffs, as Federal Reserve economists have noted, with too many administrative and eligible complications.

Despite these restrictions, according to an analysis by US Treasury Department economists, the layoffs in the US would have been drastically worse without them. The federal government has increased spending significantly in other ways to reduce the damage done to the laid-offs, such as subsidized unemployment insurance and direct payments to low- and middle-income households.

But there’s a good reason why it’s best not to get laid off at all: Previous recessions have shown that millions of laid-off workers will never return to their employers.

In addition, recent data from Gallup’s Great Job Survey shows that people laid off and rehired as a result of the pandemic saw sharp drops in job satisfaction and continued to struggle to meet monthly expenses. Globally and in the US, the world survey shows that those laid off as a result of the pandemic were significantly more likely to see a decline in their standard of living compared to the previous year.

Jonathan Rothwell is a Principal Economist at Gallup, a resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and a visiting scholar at the George Washington University Institute of Public Policy. He is the author of “A Republic of Equals: A Manifesto for a Just Society”. You can follow him on Twitter at @jtrothwell.

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Business

UNICEF chief urges the world to assist India ‘now’ as Covid instances soar

UNICEF chief urges the world to help India ‘now’ as Covid cases soar

UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore told CNBC that she was “very concerned” about the current Covid-19 crisis in India and urged the world to send urgent aid to the country.

During World Immunization Week, Fore also said it was a “race to save lives” through vaccination, especially in some of the world’s poorest countries with “very fragile” health systems.

India is in the midst of a deadly second wave of the virus. On Saturday, daily coronavirus cases in the country went over 400,000 for the first time; The total number of cases in India has now exceeded 19 million and more than 215,000 people have died of Covid in the country.

“It is worrying for a number of reasons. First, is it a forerunner of what could happen in other countries, particularly in African countries, with much weaker health systems?” Fore said last week.

“It’s worrying because their healthcare system is overwhelmed. It’s the need for oxygen and therapeutics that we just haven’t seen in this pandemic in another country of this magnitude.”

People wearing face masks wait to receive a vaccine against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at a vaccination center in Mumbai, India, on April 26, 2021.

Niharika Kulkarni | Reuters

Fore said both UNICEF and COVAX’s global immunization program had sent aid to the country, and help from other nations made a big difference. “But it is not enough because India is part of our supply chain. So this is where we source a lot of the vaccines and we now have to help India as the world,” she added.

UNICEF is the United Nations agency responsible for helping children around the world.

“Help us now”

As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the world has stopped paying attention to other routine vaccinations, warned Fore. Around 60 routine vaccination campaigns have been halted around the world as countries focus on fighting the pandemic.

To address these challenges while helping recovery from the global pandemic, the World Health Organization, UNICEF, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance and other partners are supporting a global strategy known as the Immunization Agenda 2030. The initiative aims to save 50 million lives on “an ambitious new global strategy to maximize the life-saving effects of vaccines through stronger immunization systems”.

Fore said around half of the world’s vaccinations come from routine UNICEF vaccinations for children.

“Polio, measles, yellow fever … all of these are vaccines that children need, but they are also vaccines that adults need. So we are asking families to come to primary health clinics in their own communities, bring in and have their children If you are vaccinated against these childhood diseases, you will also get a Covid vaccine and we can save 50 million lives, “she said.

When asked if she had a message for world leaders today, Fore said, “Well, help us now.”

Henrietta H. Fore, Managing Director of UNICEF on July 05, 2018 in BERLIN, GERMANY.

Ute Grabowsky / Photo library via Getty Images

“We are concerned that the world is ignoring things like routine vaccinations. We cannot lose this population, our children, to an epidemic while we worry about Covid as a pandemic for our world. Please help us now,” she said added.

Despite the ongoing global pandemic, Fore said it was time to focus on such initiatives.

“People are now realizing that vaccines are important, that vaccines work, that they save lives, and right now we are in a race to save lives,” she said.

“So if we can save them through a routine vaccination program that targets everyone in a society, both routine vaccinations and Covid will help.”

Global investment

However, Fore told CNBC that it can be difficult to focus global investments on supporting the programs.

“The Covax facility called for $ 23 billion, which sounds like a huge amount, but when you look at global GDP and opportunities, it’s a very small number,” she said.

“So they realize that we as a world can afford this, and if we could bring out vaccines for children and adults in the years to come, we would be a world that would have more justice, more fairness and better health across the board.”