The European Central Bank (ECB) has downgraded its growth estimates for 2021 due to the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, but expects a stronger recovery from 2022, the ECB president Christine Lagarde said on Thursday, according to Reuters.

According to the ECB’s baseline scenario, the euro area’s gross domestic product is expected to advance by 3.9% next year, less than the 5% increase forecast in September. By contrast, the eurozone economy is expected to grow by 4.2% in 2022, above the 3.2% advance expected in September. Also, in its first estimates for 2023, the ECB relies on a 2.1% increase in euro area GDP, according to Agerpres.

For this year, the ECB expects the euro area economy to contract by 7.3%, slightly better than the 8% contraction expected in September.

Developments on the pandemic front, including plans to introduce vaccines, give ECB officials “sufficient reason to believe that by the end of 2021 we will have reached a sufficient level of herd immunity to hope that the economy will begin to function closer to normal,” said Christine Lagarde. This is especially true for the services sector, which “will no longer be affected by these measures to maintain social distance and the restrictions it is currently subject to,” Lagarde added.