The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted the most vulnerable populations, and long-term, forward-thinking investments are needed to ensure an equitable recovery and progress toward the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals, a report from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation finds.

Now in its fifth edition, the 2021 Goalkeepers Report: COVID-19: A Global Perspectiveestimates that the pandemic pushed an additional thirty-one million people into extreme poverty in 2020, including 26.6 million people in sub-Saharan Africa, four million in South Asia, 1.5 million in North Africa and the Middle East, and 1.8 million in Latin America and the Caribbean (there were also net reductions of 2.6 million people living in extreme poverty in other regions). Recovery to date has been uneven between and within countries: While 90 percent of advanced economies are expected to regain pre-pandemic per-capita income levels by 2022, only a third of low- and middle-income economies are expected to do so. Women's employment globally is expected to remain thirteen million jobs below 2019 figures, while men's employment is largely expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels. And with poverty reduction efforts stalled, nearly seven hundred million people are projected to be living in extreme poverty in 2030.

According to the report, the pandemic has exacerbated educational disparities, with early evidence suggesting that learning losses will be greatest among marginalized groups. Even in wealthy countries such as the United States, learning loss among Black and Latinx third-grade students was, on average, double that of white and Asian-American students, and learning loss among third graders in high-poverty schools was triple that of their peers in low-poverty schools.

In the area of health, routine childhood vaccination rates around the world fell by half from 2019, to levels not seen since 2005, with more than thirty million children missing their vaccinations — ten million more than if the pandemic had not happened. At the same time, the report notes that contrary to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation's estimate last year that global vaccine coverage would drop 14 percentage points in 2020 — which would have reversed twenty-five years of progress — the actual decline appears to be only half that.

"Of course, the full extent of the pandemic's impact on the SDGs will take years to fully understand, as more and better data becomes available," Gates Foundation co-chairs Bill Gates and Melinda French Gates write in the report. "And this data doesn't diminish the very real suffering the pandemic has caused for people everywhere — far from it. But the fact that we can point to positive signs amid a once-in-a-generation global pandemic is extraordinary. With one hand tied behind their backs, countless individuals, organizations, and countries went above and beyond to innovate, adapt, and build resilient systems, and for that, they deserve the world's gratitude."

While noting "breathtaking innovation" realized under difficult circumstances, in order to ensure a truly equitable recovery from the pandemic, the report calls for long-term investments that can accelerate recovery efforts and progress toward achieving the Global Goals — investments in R&D, infrastructure, and innovation in places closer to the people who stand to benefit. To that end, the report calls for investing in systems, communities, women and girls; backing long-term, forward-thinking investments around the globe to identify new tools and technologies that could be building blocks for solutions to a multitude of challenges; and strengthening collaboration across countries and sectors.

"The pandemic has taught the world an important lesson: Responding to crises starts years before they happen," the Gateses write. "And if we want to be better, faster, and more equitable in our approach to realizing the Global Goals by 2030, we need to start laying the foundation. Now."

(Photo credit: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation)