Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
Photographer: David Paul Morris / Bloomberg
When will the pandemic end? This is the question that has been around since Covid-19 took over the world last year. The response can be measured in vaccinations.
Bloomberg has built the largest database of Covid-19 photos administered worldwide, with over 108 million doses administered worldwide. American scientific officials, such as Anthony Fauci, have suggested that 70% to 85% of the population will be needed to get things back to normal. Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker shows that some countries are making much faster progress than others, using 75% coverage with a two-dose vaccine as a target.
Israel, the country with the highest vaccination rate in the world, is heading for 75% coverage in just 2 months. The US will get there in time to call in the New Year 2022 (although North Dakota could get there six months earlier than Texas). With vaccinations taking place faster in richer Western countries than the rest of the globe, the world will take 7.4 years at the current rate.
The Bloomberg computer provides a snapshot in time, designed to put today’s vaccination rates in perspective. Use the latest vaccination average, which means that as the number of vaccinations increases, the time required to reach the 75% threshold will decrease.
The calculations will be volatile, especially in the first days of launch, and the numbers may be distorted by temporary interruptions.
For example, New York’s target date was pushed to 17 months this week, after a winter the blizzard prevented some from getting vaccinated. Similarly, Canada’s vaccination rate has halved in recent weeks, following reports of delayed vaccine deliveries. Based on the latest vaccination rate in Canada, it would take 9.7 years to reach 75% coverage. This could serve as a wake-up call for Canadian politicians and health officials, but it does not mean that they are doomed to a decade of social distancing. Canada has contracts to buy more doses of vaccine per person than any other country, and its vaccination rates are expected to increase.
The pace is likely to accelerate as more vaccines become available. Some of the largest vaccine production centers in the world in India and Mexico have just started. More than 8.5 billion doses of vaccine have been contracted by countries through more than 100 agreements pursued by Bloomberg. Only a third of countries have even started their vaccination campaigns.
Vaccinations protect against Covid-19 within a few weeks of receiving the vaccines. But if only a few people in a community get 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 burn instead of spreading into an outbreak. The concept is known as herd immunity.
In the scientific community there is conflicting definitions for when the herd’s immunity is realized. When enough people are protected, does it start to have a measurable effect on transmission speed? This could start long before 75% of people are fully vaccinated. Others define it as the time when outbreaks can no longer be sustained. For example, even if there are a lot of cases of measles in an unvaccinated community, the immunity of the herd prevents it from leaking into a country.
How we run the numbers
The vaccines available today require two doses for complete vaccination. Our calculations for coverage are based on two doses per person in the population, but do not distinguish between the first dose or the second dose administered. These failures can distort daily vaccination rates and are not available in more than 20% of the countries we target.
A new Johnson & Johnson vaccine has recently shown positive results using a single dose in a large clinical trial. If approved, we will adjust the number of doses required in proportion to the market share in each country.
Vaccines have not been authorized for use in children – these studies are ongoing. Our computer, like the virus, includes children from the population needed for protection.
A Bloomberg metric calculation does not take into account any level of natural immunity that could result from recovery from Covid-19. Severe affected sites may require a lower level of vaccination to prevent widespread transmission. Although there is evidence that people recovering from a disease maintain a certain level of natural defense, it is not clear how much protection is offered or how long it could last. The vaccine is still recommended for people who have recovered from the disease.
The computer is the latest feature of Bloomberg’s Covid-19 Tracker. The projections are updated daily and are based on average daily vaccinations from data collected from 67 countries and US states and territories. Countries may be excluded when they are in the early stages of vaccination or if they provide rare updates on their vaccination numbers.
More than 108 million photos were taken. See the latest numbers on Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker from Bloomberg