Endgame for Covid-19

AT first glance, nothing ahead in 2021 could be as bad as 2020. We have been enduring the worst economic crisis in 80 years and the worst global health crisis in 100 years - events that have profoundly damaged lives and livelihoods around the world. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projects that when we finally close the books on 2020, the world economy will have contracted 4.4 per cent. Fortunately, as we flip the calendar to 2021, we are getting closer to a point at which the economic shocks of the past year become prologue for the economic stories ahead.

Global growth is projected by the IMF to expand 5.2 per cent in 2021, as economies improve from the lows of the prior year. Promising vaccine trials have presented scenarios for mass distribution by the spring of 2021, with the potential to drive the Covid-19 pandemic into remission by the second half of the year. Optimism for a return to better days abounds as 2020 draws to a close.

Yet the current state of the pandemic paints a starkly harsher reality. Second waves of Covid-19 infections have surged exponentially in areas of Europe and the United States in the waning months of 2020, compelling several regions to reinstate restrictions and lockdowns. Some of the roughest conditions of the entire pandemic are likely to be faced in the final months of 2020 and the first quarter of 2021.