The associated lockdowns, restrictions and continued uncertainty have caused investments, trade, and remittance flows to plummet, eroded jobs and human capital, kept children out of school, and pressured food and medical supply chains, it said.

The monetary institutions warned that the humanitarian crisis can further exacerbate fragility, conflict, and violence as well as intensify risks, including in small island states. The economic crisis is threatening the lives and livelihoods of vulnerable populations, including women-led households, youth and the elderly, refugees and displaced people.

Malpass said that the world was currently experiencing a K-shaped recovery.
For the developing countries, and especially the poorest developing countries, that downward leg in the K is an increasingly desperate recession or depression that is facing people in the poorest countries because of the loss of jobs, the loss of income, and also the loss of remittances coming from workers, working outside the country, Malpass said.

Extreme poverty is set to rise for the first time in more than two decades, and persistent output losses imply a major setback to living standards versus the pre-pandemic days, the IMF said.“The poor are getting poorer with close to 90 million people expected to fall into extreme deprivation this year,” said Gopinath.

The world’s richest countries have locked up most of the world’s potential vaccine supply through 2021, raising worries that poor and vulnerable communities will not be able to get the shots. Meanwhile, an ambitious international project to deliver coronavirus vaccines to the world’s poorest people, called Covax, is facing potential shortages of money, cargo planes, refrigeration and vaccines themselves.