The leading central bankers in the world offered a cautious outlook on the global economy despite the developments on a COVID-19 vaccine, as the case count spikes in the United Kingdom, the Eurozone, and the United States.

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Thursday that this week’s positive developments on Pfizer Inc’s experimental coronavirus vaccine are “good and welcome” in the medium term. But he cautioned that the U.S. economy is not on track for a full recovery just yet.

“It’s just too soon to assess with any confidence the implications of the news for the path of the economy especially in the near term,” Powell said at a European Central Bank conference on Thursday. “With the virus spreading, the next few months could be challenging.”

Powell’s sentiment on the vaccine was echoed by his central banking counterparts in London and Frankfurt, who also spoke on the same panel.

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde said she does not want to be “exuberant” about the vaccine, noting that there are still questions about the ability to produce such a vaccine en masse and the ability to efficiently administer it.

And Bank of England Governor Andrew Bailey noted that his economists on Threadneedle Street had already baked in expectations over vaccine development into the banks’ most updated forecasts. Bailey added that the world is “not really there yet” on full implementation.

COVID cases continue to jump in all three bankers’ jurisdictions, with new case counts hitting all-time highs in Europe, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In the U.S., case counts hit a record of 142,856 on Wednesday according to the New York Times.

Still, the central bankers acknowledged that the vaccine could begin to remove some uncertainty over the economic outlook. Lagarde said the results of the U.S. election and movement on Brexit have also brought more clarity in the near term.

“From that sort of huge big river of uncertainty we see the other side now,” Lagarde said.

Longer-term scarring

All three central bankers expressed concern over the longer-term effects of the pandemic on their respective economies.

Asked about the thing that worries him the most, Powell said damage to the productive capacity of the American workforce. Powell pointed to the longer-term impacts of women leaving the labor force, kids not getting education, and small businesses going bust.

Bailey had noted that the recovery in the United Kingdom has been “very uneven” with lower-paid workers suffering deeper job losses than other slices of the labor force.

Lagarde urged monetary and fiscal policymakers to continue providing support to avoid that longer-term damage while the world continues to wait for a vaccine.

Powell similarly reiterated his call for policymakers in Washington to support households and businesses in the meantime.

“My sense is that we will need to do more and Congress may need to do more as well on fiscal policy,” Powell said.

Brian Cheung is a reporter covering the Fed, economics, and banking for Yahoo Finance. You can follow him on Twitter @bcheungz.

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