Uneven access to coronavirus vaccines in developing countries is worsening a “big divide” between rich and poor countries and slowing economic recovery from the pandemic, the United Nations which is monitoring developments said on Wednesday. labor market.

Vaccination campaigns have proven to be essential in helping to recover working hours and economic productivity. But unequal access to vaccines has resulted in a two-speed recovery for rich and poor countries according to Guy Ryder, director of the International Labor Organization.

“We are rebuilding worse at least from the perspective of the developing world,” Ryder told reporters in Geneva, adding that he would convey this message to the leaders of the Group of 20 summit, who will meet in Rome. This weekend.

According to the University of Oxford’s Our World in Data project, around the world, around 76% of injections that have been used by guns have been given in high and upper middle income countries. Only 0.5 percent of doses were given in low-income countries.

The ILO estimated in a report released Wednesday that for 14 workers fully vaccinated in the second quarter of the year, one full-time job was added to the global labor market. By early October, according to the report, 34.5% of the world’s population had been fully immunized, but at rates ranging from 59.8% of the population in high-income countries to 1.8% in low-income countries. .

As a result, the labor market recovery is stalled in 2021 and the number of hours worked this year is now expected to be well below previous estimates, the ILO said.

Fiscal stimulus packages have provided another key aid to the recovery. But 86 percent of the stimulus packages available through these initiatives were concentrated in high-income economies, the organization said.

The ILO said that with a more equitable distribution of vaccines, it would take a little more than three months for low-income countries to catch up with the pace of recouping working hours in rich countries.

The organization’s findings echo the alarm repeatedly voiced by Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director-general of the World Health Organization, who called the uneven delivery of Covid-19 vaccines a “failure moral disastrous “and set a target of vaccinating 40 percent. of each country by the end of the year.