The roll out of vaccinations is expected to accelerate exponentially in coming months as manufacturing of approved vaccines is ramped up while new vaccines are expected to enter the market.
The shipbroker added that “despite this positive picture, both the IMF and IEA warn that prospects are highly uncertain, and the recovery remains fragile amid a threat of new virus mutations and escalating outbreaks in a number of countries.
The recent Financial Times analysis of data from several countries, including the UK, France, the US and Chile shows that rates of infection, hospitalisation and fatalities have moved to lower levels in age groups where vaccine penetration has been the highest”.
Advanced economies are likely to be the first to benefit from vaccination programs, with the IEA seeing sizable growth in demand in the US and in Europe during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the year, while both OECD and non-OECD Asia are likely to witness robust growth rates during the 4th quarter.
However, for this to happen we need to see how the situation in India develops and how severely the outbreak in the country could impact infection rates elsewhere in the world”, Gibson concluded.