Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
When will the pandemic end? It’s the issue that’s been around for almost everything since Covid-19 took over the world last year. Response can be measured in vaccinations.
Bloomberg has built the largest database of Covid-19 shots given worldwide, with more than 108 million doses administered worldwide. U.S. scientific officials like Anthony Fauci have suggested that 70% to 85% coverage of the population will be needed to get things back to normal. From Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker shows that some countries are advancing much faster than others, using 75% coverage with a two-dose vaccine as a target.
Israel, the country with the highest vaccination rate in the world, has 75% coverage in just 2 months. The United States will arrive just in time for the new year of 2022 (although North Dakota could arrive six months earlier than Texas). With faster vaccination in richer Western countries than in the rest of the world, the world will take 7.4 years at the current rate.
The Bloomberg calculator provides a snapshot over time, designed to put current vaccination rates in perspective. It uses the most recent rotating average of vaccines, which means that as vaccines increase, the time needed to reach the 75% threshold will decrease.
Calculations will be unstable, especially in the early days of the release, and figures may be distorted by temporary interruptions.
For example, the New York target date was retired at 17 months this week after a winter the blizzard prevented some from getting vaccinated. Similarly, Canada’s vaccination rate has dropped by half in recent weeks following reports of delays in vaccine shipments. Based on Canada’s latest inoculation rate, it would take 9.7 years to reach 75% coverage. This could serve as a wake-up call to Canadian politicians and health officials, but that doesn’t mean they are doomed to a decade of social distancing. Canada yes hires to buy more doses of vaccine per person than any other country, and their vaccination rates are expected to increase.
The pace is likely to accelerate as more vaccines become available. Some of the world’s largest vaccine manufacturing centers in India and Mexico are just beginning. Countries have contracted more than 8.5 billion doses of vaccine through more than 100 agreements followed by Bloomberg. Only a third of countries have even started their vaccination campaigns.
Vaccines protect against Covid-19 within weeks of being shot. But if only a few people in a community are vaccinated, the virus can continue to spread uncontrollably. As more people receive the vaccine, groups of people begin to build a collective defense against the virus so that isolated sparks of infection occur instead of spreading into an outbreak. The concept is known as herd immunity.
There are some in the scientific community conflicting definitions of when herd immunity is achieved. Is it when enough people are protected that it begins to have a measurable effect on transmission speed? This could start long before 75% of people are fully vaccinated. Others define it as the point at which shoots can no longer be maintained. For example, even if there is an accumulation of measles cases in an unvaccinated community, the herd’s immunity prevents it from spreading across a country.
How we run numbers
The vaccines available today require two doses for complete vaccination. Our coverage calculations are based on two doses per person in the population, but do not differentiate between first or second doses administered. These breakdowns can distort daily vaccination rates and are not available in more than 20% of the countries we follow.
A new Johnson & Johnson vaccine recently showed positive results with a single dose in a large clinical trial. If approved, we will adjust the number of doses required in proportion to their market share in each country.
Vaccines have not been authorized for use in children: these studies are ongoing. Our calculator, like the virus, includes children in the population who need to be protected.
A Bloomberg metric calculator does not take into account any level of natural immunity that may result from Covid-19 recovery. It is possible that the most affected sites may require a lower level of vaccination to prevent widespread transmission. While there is evidence that people recovering from the disease retain a certain level of natural defenses, it is unclear what protection is offered or how long it can last. The vaccine is still recommended for people who have recovered from an illness.
The calculator is the latest feature of Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Tracker. The projections are updated daily and are based on the average daily vaccination in data collected from 67 countries and the states and territories of the United States. Countries can be excluded when they are in the early stages of vaccination or if they provide infrequent updates on their number of vaccinations.
More than 108 million shots have been fired. See the latest issues in Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker