By Aditya Raghunath
Investing.com -- International bank Barclays (LON:BARC) PLC ADR (NYSE:BCS) said that the impact of the second wave of COVID-19 on India might be limited. In a note on Monday, Barclays said that looking at the current pace of vaccination, India is on track to vaccinate 300 million people by August and 500 million by the end of 2021.
With such a good pace of vaccination, it is estimated that the impact will be limited. “Given the increasingly faster vaccine rollout, the disruption from rising infections and related lockdowns might be limited ... risks to our growth outlook are balanced for now,” said Barclays.
However, states like Maharashtra and Odisha have said that they are running short on vaccines, forcing a number of vaccination centers to shut down temporarily. This has led the government to approve Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine which will be manufactured by Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories Ltd (NS:REDY).
“India’s ability to continue the current run rate may be at risk, given incremental news flow of supply shortages and vaccine bottlenecks,” Barclays said.
The note added that if current restrictions continue for two months, GDP will be hit by 0.34 percentage points. This is almost twice the impact it estimated previously.