Post Covid-19 green recovery and our next normal

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Post Covid-19 green recovery and our next normal

Dr Lorenc Xhaferraj 1 February 2021

________________________________________________________________________________ _ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 3 Covid-19 disease ................................................................................................................................ 4 Covid-19 vaccines: Science triumph vs ethical questions ..................................................... 7 Post Covid-19 economic recovery and our next normal ....................................................... 12 Conclusions....................................................................................................................................... 16 About us ............................................................................................................................................. 18 Endnotes ............................................................................................................................................ 19

_________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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Introduction Since its outbreak in December 2019, the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted daily lives of billions all over the world, and added significant pressure on the already existing enormous challenges to the global economic, environmental, social development. More than a year has passed since its outbreak and matters related to its fight seem to get more complicated, with health and economic situation far from getting better.

The World Health Organisation first learned of this new virus from cases in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China on 31 December 2019. Globally, as of 23 January 2021, there have been 96,658,420 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,092,062 deaths, reported to WHO. These figures are quite alarming and the worst thing is, they keep growing significantly with every single day passing. While most of the infected people experience mild symptoms and recover after 2 to 6 weeks, there is increasing documentation of the long-term effects of COVID-19, including among younger and non-vulnerable groups.

As a natural response to the severity of Covid-19 pandemic to health and high impact to the global economy, governments, international organisations, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutes joined their forces to find an effective Covid-19 vaccine, whereas more than 200 potential vaccines started to develop. Massive vaccination of the population will help to create the herd immunity faster and without excessive deaths, as well to enable a faster and secure return to a new normal.

Many of these vaccines resulted from multinational collaboration involving both the public and private sectors, like AstraZeneca’s collaboration with Oxford University in the U.K. There was also strong cooperation between governments and business, to secure the funds needed for vaccine development and distribution. The UK was the first country to approve the Pfizer & Biontech vaccine to be used with the first jab being administered on 8 December 2020.

With anti Covid-19 vaccines becoming more available to use all over the world, there is high hope the world will start to get back to a new normal soon, starting from spring 2021.

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Covid-19 disease COVID-19 is the disease caused by a new coronavirus (named for the crown-like spikes on their surface) called SARS-CoV-2, a highly infectious and contagious virus. WHO first learned of this new virus on 31 December 2019, following a report of a cluster of cases of ‘viral pneumonia’ in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China1. The new coronavirus outbreak has caused the most challenging crisis the international community have ever faced during last century.

On 30 January 2020, WHO Director-General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, declared the COVID-19 outbreak a public health emergency of international concern. The declaration was WHO’s highest level of alarm – a rallying call to all countries to immediately take notice, and take action.2 Covid-19 has caused considerable morbidity and taken a heavy toll of lives. Globally, as of 4:03pm CET, 31 January 2021, there have been 102,083,344 confirmed cases of COVID-19, including 2,209,195 deaths, reported to WHO3.

In the United Kingdom, up to 31 January 2021, there have been 3,817,176 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 106,158 deaths4. These figures are quite alarming and the worst thing is they keep growing significantly with every single day passing.

While most of the infected people experience mild symptoms and recover after 2 to 6 weeks, there is increasing documentation of the long-term effects of COVID-19, including among younger and non-vulnerable groups.

However, the preponderance of covid-19 deaths—around 85% in England, for example—are of people aged 70 or over5.

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People with COVID-19 have had a wide range of symptoms reported6 – ranging from mild symptoms to severe illness. Symptoms may appear 2-14 days after exposure to the virus. People with these symptoms may have COVID-19: •

Fever or chills

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Cough

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Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

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Fatigue

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Muscle or body aches

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Headache

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New loss of taste or smell

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Sore throat

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Congestion or runny nose

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Nausea or vomiting

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Diarrhea

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Some people who have had COVID-19, whether they have needed hospitalization or not, continue to experience symptoms, including fatigue, respiratory and neurological symptoms.

Among those who develop symptoms, most (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. About 15% become seriously ill and require oxygen and 5% become critically ill and need intensive care.

Complications leading to death may include respiratory failure, acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), sepsis and septic shock, thromboembolism, and/or multiorgan failure, including injury of the heart, liver or kidneys7.

All viruses naturally mutate over time, and Sars-CoV-2 is no exception. Since the virus was first identified a year ago, thousands of mutations have arisen. New variants of coronavirus are emerging that are more infectious than the original one that started the pandemic. The new “Kent variant� of the coronavirus, which was first identified in September 2020 in Kent, UK, apart from being 70% more infectious than the original variant of the coronavirus, there is some evidence showing it may be associated with a higher degree of mortality8.

Covid-19 mutations cause a twofold problem. In the short-term, the governments all over the world must impose the harshest of lockdowns to reduce the new infections, quite often in repetitive mode. In long term, Covid-19 most likely is to become an endemic disease and the world may face a scenario like flu, where new vaccines are developed and administered every year. The problem is, the more variants of Covid-19 viruses will be in circulation, the greater the chance the virus will be able to escape part of the vaccine - and this may reduce the efficacy of vaccines.

_________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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Covid-19 vaccines: Science triumph vs ethical questions COVID-19 disease is caused by a new virus, to which the population has no immunity. In such a situation, vaccines become the only option to faster beat the disease and protect the population. Vaccines reduce deaths and hospital admissions in two ways: they protect the vaccinated directly, stopping them becoming ill; and they offer indirect protection to the unvaccinated, because those already vaccinated will be less likely to infect the other people.

In January 2020 over 130 scientists, funders and manufacturers from across the globe committed to working with WHO to speed the development of a vaccine against COVID199. WHO has arranged for the world’s best scientific minds to analyse data – even before they are published – to rapidly understand this virus, how disease develops, the immune responses needed to control it and the tools required to evaluate would-be vaccines. In February 2020, WHO hosted an agenda-setting Global Research and Innovation Forum on this new virus, attended by nearly 900 experts and funders from more than 40 countries, who took stock of what was known so far and set the agenda going forward.10 Different approaches such as inactivated and attenuated vaccines, viral vector-based vaccines and DNA- and RNA-based vaccines are being studied. Based on previous research data, using the modern technology and enormous funding opportunities, the first vaccines progressed quickly through development to clinical trials and got approval by the end of the year 2020.

On 8 December 2020, a UK grandmother, 91-year-old, has become the first person in the world to be given the Pfizer Covid-19 jab as part of a mass vaccination programme. This day marked the start of the fightback against the common enemy, the coronavirus, and the UK was the first country in the world to approve the use Covid-19 vaccine developed by Pfizer & Biontech11. Based on evidence from clinical trials, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was 95% effective at preventing laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 illness in people without evidence of previous infection12.

It was possibile to develop COVID-19 vaccines so quickly, just in 10 months, because of years of previous research on related viruses (SARS and MERS13), faster ways to manufacture _________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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vaccines, enormous funding that allowed firms to run multiple clinical trials in parallel, and regulators moving more quickly than normal. Some of those factors might translate to other vaccine efforts, particularly speedier manufacturing platforms.

The slowest part of vaccine development isn’t finding candidate treatments, but testing them.

This often takes years, with companies running efficacy and safety tests on animals and then in humans. Human testing requires three phases that involve increasing numbers of people and proportionately escalating costs. The COVID-19 vaccines went through the same trials, but the billions poured into the process made it possible for companies to take financial risks by running some tests at the same time.

Conventional vaccines contain viral proteins or disabled forms of the virus itself, which stimulate the body’s immune defences against infection by a live virus. But the first two COVID-19 vaccines for which efficacy was announced in large-scale (phase III) clinical trials used just a string of mRNA inside a lipid coat. The mRNA encodes a key protein of SARS-CoV2; once the mRNA gets inside our cells, our bodies produce this protein. That acts as the antigen — the foreign molecule that triggers an immune response. The vaccines made by Pfizer and BioNTech and by the US pharmaceutical company Moderna both use mRNA that _________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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encodes the spike protein, which docks to human cell membranes and allows the coronavirus to invade the cell.14 2021 has welcomed some positive development in terms of beating the Covid-19 disease. The approval, in at least one country, of vaccines made by Pfizer and BioNTech, Moderna, Oxford and AstraZeneca, Sinopharm, Serum Institute, Bharat Biotech, Gamaleya, and others within a year of viral sequencing smashed all records for development timelines.

This triumph of science, the development of a vaccine in less than a year, needs to be backed up with necessary vaccine production & distribution capacities, as the world is witnessing a slow start of vaccine rollout. The producers of the approved vaccines are ramping up their production capacities to be able to deliver sufficient doses, at least enough to vaccinate highrisk populations worldwide.

In addition to supply issues, the vaccination programmes are in jeopardy of new mutations of the Covid-19, which are more-infectious strains of the virus detected in South Africa, the United Kingdom, and elsewhere and have spread to an increasing number of countries and which could make the vaccines less effective15.

While many parts of the world are expected to reach herd immunity against COVID-19, there is increasing consensus that globally, SARS-CoV-2 is likely to remain endemic in the medium term. David Heymann, the chairman of the World Health Organization’s Strategic and Technical Advisory Group for Infectious Hazards, noted in December that endemicity may be the “destiny” of this virus and vaccines and good public health practice will help the world “learn to live with COVID-19.”16 In January 2021 the global efforts to control the Covid-19 pandemic are being described as a race between infections and injections. While the infections are still winning, some 51 countries had begun to administer vaccines, with Israel, UAE and the UK being the world champions.17

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At the moment most of governments’ energy is going into sorting out the logistics of vaccine distribution, which they can directly control. However, as the UK and Western European countries are discovering it now18, vaccine supply is what matters most.

The good news is that more doses will become available, as manufacture scales up and new vaccines win regulatory approval. One from Johnson & Johnson, expected to report trial results late this month, could inoculate 1bn people during 2021.19 The race to vaccine more and faster of population in the wealthy countries has raised ethical questions. As of mid-January, according to the Duke Global Health Institute, more than 7bn vaccine doses had been purchased globally and the lion’s share –– 4.2bn – have gone to highincome countries. While high-income countries represent only 16% of the world’s population, they hold 60% of the Covid vaccines purchased so far. Canada topped the list, having purchased enough vaccines to cover more than five times their population. Most other highincome countries have more than 100% coverage, and some can cover their populations several times over.20 Middle- and lower-income nations are lagging far behind, with many not projected to be significantly immunised until at least 2025. Covax21, a global compact to equitably share _________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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vaccines, says it is on track to administer enough doses to cover only about 27% of populations in its member countries this year.

Vaccinating poorer countries against Covid-19 is not just a moral imperative but an economic one. In the absence of global coordination, countries that successfully contain the virus will still struggle as long as the other countries do not contain it22.

According to the World Health Organisation, “vaccine nationalism" could lead to a "protracted recovery."23 WHO has criticised the EU's announcement of export controls on vaccines produced within the bloc, saying such measures risked prolonging the pandemic. The so-called transparency mechanism gives EU countries powers to deny authorisation for vaccine exports if the company making them has not honoured existing contracts with the EU. Speaking at the Davos Agenda, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General, World Health Organization said vaccine hoarding would "keep the pandemic burning and... slow global economic recovery", in addition to being a "catastrophic moral failure" that could further widen global inequality.24

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Post Covid-19 economic recovery and our next normal About twelve months ago, most people weren’t thinking about COVID-19 outbreak at all.

Nowadays, you simply cannot block news about it and people all around the world are longing for an end of Covid-19 pandemic. They want their life back, at least to be able to return to some kind of new normal. While the world is longing and inching toward the next normal, for sure it will not be the same as we used to live before the pandemic and it will be a gradual process.

Coronavirus pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of mankind in a globalised, highly interconnected and dependent world. On the flip side, it was a wake-up call to the consequences of abusive relationship of mankind with the nature. World leaders busy in designing/implementing the economic green recovery packages. In the UK, Lord Goldsmith announced that governments around the world have committed $9 trillion to COVID recovery25.

It is hard to predict when the pandemic will end. From the epidemiological point of view, the pandemic will end when herd immunity is achieved. This will occur when the number of people immune to COVID-19 is high enough to prevent further ongoing transmission.26 From this perspective, the world might be reaching this phase near autumn of 2021.

Speaking from the societal point of view, a transition to our next normal will occur sooner than the above prediction. This return may occur in spring 2021 when almost all aspects of social and economic life can resume without fear of ongoing mortality (when a mortality rate is no longer higher than a country’s historical average) or long-term health consequences related to COVID-19. The process will be enabled by tools such as vaccination of the highestrisk populations; rapid, accurate testing; improved therapeutics; and continued strengthening of public-health responses.27 According to McKinsey Institute, while the United States could still achieve herd immunity in the third or fourth quarter of 2021, the emergence of more-infectious variants of SARS-CoV2 increases the risk that this milestone will not be achieved until later. More-infectious viruses _________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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require that a higher percentage of people be simultaneously immune to reach herd immunity. While a more infectious variant likely means more people are acquiring natural immunity through infection (despite ongoing efforts to minimize new cases), the net impact of more-infectious strains is likely to be that a higher portion of the population needs to be vaccinated, which may take more time.

McKinsey Institute projects the similar dynamics in the United Kingdom, as in the United Stated. Three factors lead McKinsey Institute to believe that timelines for herd immunity and transition toward the new normal in the United Kingdom will be similar to those in the United States. •

First, access to vaccines is sufficient to immunize a large percentage of both the US and UK populations during 2021.

•

Second, public willingness to be vaccinated is generally similar between the two countries.

•

Third, the fraction of US and UK residents who already have natural immunity from prior infection is in the same range.28

According to a projection by The Economist, the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic will have a huge and lasting negative effect on the global economy; 2020 and 2021 will be lost years in terms of growth, and The Economist Intelligence Unit expects the global economy to recover to pre-coronavirus levels only in 202229. Some members of the G7 and BRICS groupings will recover quickly, whereas others will take up to four years to return to pre-coronavirus GDP levels. China will be an exception, as it is not expected the country to enter a recession this year.

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In other words, the coronavirus pandemic has wiped out about four years of economic growth for Canada, France, Germany and the UK. However, due to the stimulus packages, it is expected the recovery in most of these countries will be swift.

Germany, the EU’s traditional growth engine, will be back to pre-coronavirus GDP levels by late 2022. Canada and France will also have recovered by end-2022, although high levels of unemployment in both countries will threaten their recovery. The UK is an outlier, recovering only in 2023, largely due to the negative impact expected by end of the Brexit transition period in December 2020, which will cause a further economic shock.

Italy’s recovery will also be slow, returning to pre-coronavirus GDP levels only in 2024. The country was a thorny issue for the EU before the pandemic started, given its high level of indebtedness. The pandemic will heighten pre-existing political tensions, as Italy increasingly looks like the sick man of Europe.

The World Bank raised the concern that the pandemic is creating and spreading worldwide a new generation of poverty and debt turmoil,30 and the IMF shares the view that developing nations could risk grave economic crisis wiping the economic growth of their fragile economies for a decade.31 _________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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Blomberg has labelled the global post covid-19 recovery as “K-shaped recovery.” The virus has widened income or wealth gaps across fault lines of class, race and gender. Women have been hit disproportionately hard—partly because they’re more likely to work in the industries that struggled, but also because they had to shoulder much of the extra childcare burden as schools closed. In Canada, women’s participation in the labour force fell to the lowest since the mid-1980s.32 Covid-19 raised concerns about safe social distancing at work, where some industries, like retail, hospitality or warehousing where hit the most from the restrictive measures imposed by the governments. Some companies were able to carry on their business using modern technology and automation.

Companies worldwide encouraged work from home and were able to stay connected with their employees using, zoom, teams, or other software. In other industries, there were witnessed some replacement the humans with robots, or machines were used to check guests into hotels, cut salads at restaurants, or collect fees at toll booths. These innovations will make economies more productive. But they also mean that when it’s safe to go back to work, some jobs just won’t be there. 33 Travel and tourism were the most hard-hit sectors and Covid-19 pandemic has changed them forever. Global tourism fell 72%34 during January-October 2020, whereas a quarter of business trips could disappear forever as meetings move online.

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Conclusions Covid-19 pandemic has caused a severe health emergency and disrupted the world economy.

Economic shocks like the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 only arrive once every few generations and they bring about permanent and far-reaching change. Covid-19 pandemic has created favourable preconditions for a “great economic reset”, for a “green recovery” and a brighter future.

The science triumph, the development and approval for emergency use of anti Covid-19 vaccines should accelerate the rebound in 2021. On the other hand, other legacies of Covid19 will shape global growth for years to come.

Due to the restrictive measures taken by the governments over the world to slow down the infection rates, the world has evidenced a global sharp drop in greenhouse-gas emissions brought relief to the atmosphere of earth. The 2020 year saw planes grounded and people staying home, even major “traditional polluters” felt a real threat from the world getting serious about climate change.

Covid-19 pandemic has created a rare opportunity for the international community at large to address the climate change related issues globally now and at the depth they require. It’s time, it’s the right moment for the international community to act united, as it has no other alternative, but to perform a green reset of the economy in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Governments all over the

world have announced their ambitious plans towards achieving a “green recovery” and some argue, even Joe Biden, the new US President, was elected with a promise the U.S. will rejoin the Paris Agreement (which he did).

Covid-19 pandemic has changed the global thinking about international trade. When Chinese factories shut down early in the pandemic, it sent shock waves through supply chains everywhere—and made businesses and governments reconsider their reliance on the world’s model of business. Covid-19 pandemic exposed the risk and stressed the importance that in the future governments must diversify sources and routes of importing goods vital to their national security.

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Aiming at restoring the economic growth faster, the world’s governments ran economic stimulus packages, which caused higher budget deficits. Now governments are struggling how to pay for such economic interventions and to balance the high budget deficits in medium term.

In long term, Covid-19 pandemic brought in a big rethink in economics and changed minds of policy makers about public debt. The new consensus says governments have more room to spend in a low-inflation world, and should use fiscal policy more proactively to drive their economies.

The option of remote work, where companies used online platforms, such zoom, teams and other software to stay connected with their employees, or to organise virtual events, also triggered some fears of replacement of humans with robots. Automation and other innovations will make economies more productive, but they also mean that when it’s safe to go back to work, some jobs just won’t be there.

Travel and tourism were the most har-hit sectors and Covid-19 pandemic has changed these two sectors forever. It is estimated a quarter of business trips could disappear forever as meetings move online.

Currently, there is a real risk of “vaccine nationalisation” and the best tools against COVID-19 not being shared fairly among countries. Many health systems in the world are struggling to roll out COVID-19 vaccines, tests and treatments, while managing all other areas of health. In order to reclaim our lives back in 2021, overcoming the above challenges will require the global stakeholders to come together with humility, humanity and generosity.

After the pandemic will be over, it is yet to be tested if governments, businesses and other influential stakeholders have truly changed their thinking and ways of conducting business toward a “greener” approach, or they will revert back to doing business as before. Time will tell.

_________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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About us Esharelife Think Tank is a non-profit, independent, nongovernmental organization, not associated with any particular political parties or businesses. It will serve as an open forum where like-minded people can freely share their ideas and knowledge on global development issues and the future of our planet.

It is actively cooperating with several think tanks to promote the philosophy of sharing life in the digital era, disseminating information worth reading, and provoking lively discussion on matters that concern all of us.

Esharelife Think Tank aims to expand its membership among the circles of academic researchers, business’ representatives, and societal changes influencers. Please join us!

Dr Lorenc Xhaferraj is leading the Esharelife Think Tank. He is a former diplomat, with a rich experience in multilateral diplomacy, governments’ and international organizations’ affairs.

He follows with increased interest multiple policy areas such as current international affairs, counter-terrorism and violent extremism, human rights, UN Global Goals, economic and environmental issues, clean energy and public diplomacy.

He holds a PhD in European Studies and shares an equal passion for current international affairs and the latest trends in the information technology sector.

Follow us: _________________________________________________________________________________ Esharelife Foundation, Charity no. 1183101 Baird House, 15-17 St. Cross Street, London, EC1N 8UW Tel: +44 207 101 0741 Website: http://www.esharelife.org/thinktank/ Email: thinktank@esharelife.org

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Endnotes

1

Situation report 1, available https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situationreports/20200121-sitrep-1-2019-ncov.pdf 2 https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-statement-on-ihremergency-committee-on-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov) 3 https://covid19.who.int/ 4 https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/easy_read 5 https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/01/23/how-fast-can-vaccination-against-covid19-make-a-difference 6 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/symptoms-testing/symptoms.html 7 https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/question-and-answers-hub/q-adetail/coronavirus-disease-covid-19 8 Prime Minister's statement on coronavirus (COVID-19): 22 January 2021, https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-statement-on-coronavirus-covid-19-22-january2021 9 https://www.who.int/news/item/13-04-2020-public-statement-for-collaboration-on-covid-19-vaccinedevelopment 10 https://www.who.int/news-room/spotlight/a-year-without-precedent-who-s-covid-19-response 11 https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-authorises-pfizer-biontech-covid-19-vaccine 12 https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6950e2.htm?s_cid=mm6950e2_w 13 SARS- Severe Acute Respiratory syndrome; MERS- Middle East Respiratory Syndrome 14 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03626-1 15 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00121-z 16 https://www.healio.com/news/infectious-disease/20210104/qa-will-covid19-become-endemic?

17 https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations 18 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-15/pfizer-to-cut-covid-vaccine-deliveries-as-itrenovates-factory 19 https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/01/20/the-marathon-of-covid-19-vaccination 20 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/worlds-poor-need-action-not-covid-vaccine-nationalismsay-experts 21 https://www.who.int/initiatives/act-accelerator/covax 22 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/25/hoarding-covid-vaccines-could-cost-wealthy-countries45tn 23 https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/08/1070422 24 https://www.weforum.org/events/the-davos-agenda-2021 25 https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/environmental-sustainability-and-resilience-for-a-clean-andgreen-recovery 26 https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/10/natural-herd-immunity-mentality-cannot-stopcoronavirus-weak-vaccine-cvd/

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https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/when-will-the-covid19-pandemic-end 28 https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/healthcare-systems-and-services/our-insights/when-will-the-covid19-pandemic-end 29 The Economist Intelligence Unit Report “Q3 global forecast 2020�, available at www.eiu.com 30 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2020/10/07/covid-19-to-add-as-many-as-150-millionextreme-poor-by-2021 31 https://blogs.imf.org/2020/08/27/covid-19-without-help-low-income-developing-countries-risk-a-lostdecade/ 32 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-10/how-a-k-shaped-recovery-is-widening-u-sinequality-quicktake 33 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-17/how-covid-19-is-helping-robots-take-your-jobfaster-podcast 34 https://www.unwto.org/news/international-tourism-down-70-as-travel-restrictions-impact-all-regions

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