India, Feb. 12 -- It is in rich countries' direct economic interest to ensure poor nations are fully vaccinated as well

Rolling out a vaccine to stop the spread of a global pandemic doesn't come cheap. Billions of dollars have been spent developing drugs and putting in place a programme to get those drugs into people's arms.

But amid an uneven distribution of vaccines - with poorer countries lagging far behind richer nations - another concern presents itself: The cost of not vaccinating everyone.

My colleagues and I sought to find out what the total hit to the global economy of uneven vaccination distribution might be.

To do so, we analyzed 35 industries - such as services and manufacturing - in 65 countries and examined how they were...