(Bloomberg Opinion) -- As Europe braces for a second wave of the coronavirus pandemic that in parts of the continent looks to be more intensive than the first, it is tempting to assume that the developing world has gotten off lightly. In India, which has the world’s second-highest total of Covid-19 cases, the number of new infections has been trending downwards since September. Other large developing nations flattened their curves even earlier: Brazil peaked in August and South Africa in July.
Back in March, we would have gratefully accepted this outcome: There were very real and logical fears that once the virus began to spread in poorer countries in Asia and Africa, their limited healthcare systems would struggle far more than Italy’s and Spain’s. It looks as though the world has dodged a bullet.
Yet, I am not at all sure that we should be confident about the winter and next year. Even in the best-case scenario, a vaccine will not be available in much of the developing world before the second half of 2021. There is more than enough time for new waves of transmission to strike between now and then.
That’s why the causes of Europe’s second wave and the continent’s response are so worrying. European nations opened up too much and, when curves began climbing again, they were much slower to lock down than they had been in the spring. Experts warned as early as August that summer vacations were causing new cases to spike. The response was tragically slow.
An unwillingness to lock down again is understandable even without appealing to some nebulous notion of “pandemic fatigue.” The plain fact is that we all understand now, a little better than in the spring, the enormous human and economic costs of strict lockdowns.
It is also true that the costs paid by the developing world, particularly those countries which instituted broad nationwide lockdowns, were even harsher. In South Africa, for example, where President Cyril Ramaphosa responded early and firmly to the virus, GDP fell by over 50% in annualized terms. India, which also shut down in late March, took a huge hit from its national lockdown, which was gradually eased over the summer.
In developing countries with minimal or leaky welfare systems, such costs are disproportionately borne by those who can least afford it. In Bangladesh, the poverty rate has risen 10 percentage points to almost 30% of the population since last year. According to the Dhaka-based think tank SANEM, it may cross 40% before the pandemic is done — a doubling of poverty that would bring the country back to where it was in 2005.