The delay in vaccination will cost the global economy trillions of dollars over the next few years, with developing economies bearing most of the losses, the Economist Intelligence Unit reported on Friday.

The agency predicts that countries that have not reached 60 per cent of their population by mid-2022 will lose $2.3 trillion between 2022 and 2025.

Agathe Agathe Demarais, head of global forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, wrote: "emerging countries will bear about 2/3 of these losses, further delaying their economic convergence with more developed countries."

In absolute terms, Asia will be the "worst affected continent", with losses expected to reach $1.7 trillion, or 1.3 per cent of the region's expected GDP. Sub-Saharan African countries are expected to lose about 3 per cent of GDP, the highest in percentage terms.

"these estimates are shocking, but they only partly reflect lost economic opportunities, especially in the long run," the Economist Intelligence Unit said. " The agency noted that the forecast did not take into account the impact of the epidemic on education. During the blockade, rich countries turned to distance education, but many developing countries did not have this option.

Data compiled by Johns Hopkins University show that more than 213 million people worldwide have been infected with novel coronavirus and at least 4.4 million people died during the pandemic.

Rich countries are far ahead in COVID-19 vaccination rates, moving towards strengthening agents and reopening their economies, while poorer countries lag far behind in vaccination competitions.

As of Aug. 23, about 5 billion doses of the vaccine had been injected worldwide, but only 15.02 million of them were in low-income countries, according to Our World in Data.