Science The Wire
India’s National Statistical Office recently announced that the country’s GDP for the 2021 financial year contracted by 7.3%, the first full-year contraction in four decades. One year into the pandemic, a Pew Research Center analysis estimated 134 million (9.7% ) Indians lived on $2 or less a day, more than double the 4.3% forecast in January 2020. India’s middle class, the driver of much of India’s economic growth, is estimated to have contracted by a third, to 32 million in 2020, compared to pre-pandemic projections.
Unless India solves its health crisis, it cannot solve its economic crisis. For low and lower middle income countries, including India, the aphorism ‘health is wealth’ has never been truer than in the context of picking vaccines. Not all vaccines are equal. By mitigating the severity of disease, reducing asymptomatic cases and cutting transmission, vaccines of higher efficacy provide greater economic benefits, especially to the less privileged, who are more affected.
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