Business Insider - Goldman Sachs has laid out a timeline for when coronavirus vaccines will be rolled out in advanced economies.
The bank's predicted timing is based on a combination of supply estimates — from vaccine developers Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, AstraZeneca-Oxford, Novavax, and Johnson & Johnson — and demand (using consumer surveys).
More than 70% of people in developed markets may have received a vaccine shot by the second quarter of 2021, according to Goldman's timeline.
On Monday, the UK became the first country to approve Pfizer and BioNTech's vaccine shot, marking a major relief for economies and travel-dependent sectors around the world.
Economists Daan Struyven and Sid Bhushan said they expect the first available doses in the US to go to high-risk groups from mid-December. That would point to significant health benefits by the first quarter of 2021, they said, followed by widespread vaccination from April.
In all major developed markets, large parts of the population are expected to be vaccinated by fall 2021.
The UK is expected to have vaccinated half of its population by March, with the US and Canada likely having done so shortly after by April, they said. The European Union, Japan, and Australia can expect to reach this level of immunization by May.
Children under the age of 12 could start being inoculated globally from October 2021.
Goldman Sachs predicted that the US FDA will approve Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna's vaccines in the coming weeks. The agency has advisory committee meetings scheduled for the two products on December 10 and December 17, respectively.
Based on comments from the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the economists said leading vaccines will be approved for the European Union before the end of this year.
Daan Struyven and Sid Bhushan also laid out a downside scenario to project what happens if AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson's vaccines do not succeed, and demand weakens. That would imply a slower rate of vaccination in Europe, which is more reliant on these candidates.
But their baseline forecast is that widespread immunization will "drive a sharp pickup" in global growth starting in the second quarter of 2021.
