How Many People In The World Are Vaccinated

Covid Vaccine Tracker: Hows My Country And The Rest Of The World Doing

• Coronavirus pandemic

When it comes to the coronavirus vaccine there is one question most people are asking – when will I get it? A handful of countries have set very specific vaccination targets, but for the rest of the world the picture is less clear.

Getting the world vaccinated against Covid-19 is a matter of life and death, involving complicated scientific processes, multinational corporations, government promises and backroom deals. So figuring out when and how everyone in the world will get the vaccine is not easy.

Agathe Demarais is the director of global forecasting at the Economist Intelligence Unit, which has done some of the most comprehensive research on the topic. She has looked at the world’s production capacity, along with the healthcare facilities needed to get vaccines into people’s arms, the number of people a country has to contend with, and what they can afford.

• The vaccines that work – and the others on the way

Many of the findings seem to fall along predictable lines of rich v poor. The UK and the US are both well supplied with vaccines right now because they could afford to invest a lot of money into vaccine development and put themselves at the front of the queue.

Rich countries that didn’t do that, like Canada or those in the EU bloc, are a little further behind. Canada was criticised at the end of last year for buying up five times the supply it needs to cover its population, but it seems it wasn’t positioned for priority delivery.

Which Vaccines Are In Use

The vaccine produced by Pfizer and BioNTech was the first approved by the WHO, followed by several others.

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is now the most widely used around the globe.

Unlike Pfizer’s jab – which has to be kept at an extremely cold temperature – the Oxford vaccine can be stored in a normal fridge, which makes it easier to distribute.

Most governments have started with doses for the over-60s, health workers and people who are clinically vulnerable. After priority groups have been vaccinated, there is a wider rollout among younger age groups.

The Pfizer vaccine has been approved for 12 to 15-year-olds in the US, UK, Europe and other countries. The Sinovac vaccine is being used for children as young as three in China and Colombia.

Early studies suggest the newly identified Omicron variant of coronavirus is better able to evade vaccine protection than previous strains, though vaccination still offers strong protection against serious illness and hospitalisation.

A third ‘booster’ dose of a vaccine does appear to offer protection against infection from Omicron and at least 89 countries have begun booster vaccination programmes.

Worldwide, more than 100 possible vaccines are undergoing trials to test their efficacy and safety.

How Do Childhood Vaccination Policies Vary Across The World

We recently charted mandatory childhood vaccine policies worldwide as they are becoming an increasingly important policy intervention for governments trying to address low vaccination rates.48

The term mandatory and mandates are taken to mean quite different things across countries. Whilst the term is commonly used it is poorly defined.49 Mandates require vaccination for a certain purpose, most commonly related to school entry for children. While definitional disagreements still persist, it remains important to better understand what policies are in place across countries and the reasons driving changes in policy over time.

Our list indicates whether a country has a mandatory vaccination policy for one or more vaccine and the strictness of the mandate on a scale ranging across three levels: mandatory, mandatory for school entry, or recommended. The childhood vaccines include the vaccines that protect from measles, mumps, rubella, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, polio, rabies, hepatitis B, rotavirus, haemophilus influenzae type B, and tuberculosis some of which are administered as combined vaccines. We have classified a country as having a mandatory policy if they mandate for at least one vaccine.

The differences in vaccination policy across the world are shown in the map. By covering 149 countries we could identify some trends around where and why vaccines are mandatory today.

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Global Immunization Coverage 2020

A summary of global vaccination coverage in 2020 follows.

Haemophilus influenzae type b causes meningitis and pneumonia. Hib vaccine had been introduced in 192 Member States by the end of 2020. Global coverage with 3 doses of Hib vaccine is estimated at 70%. There is great variation between regions. The WHO Region of South-East Asia is estimated to have 83% coverage, while it is only 25% in the WHO Western Pacific Region.

Hepatitis B is a viral infection that attacks the liver. Hepatitis B vaccine for infants had been introduced nationwide in 190 Member States by the end of 2020. Global coverage with 3 doses of hepatitis B vaccine is estimated at 83%. In addition, 113 Member States introduced one dose of hepatitis B vaccine to newborns within the first 24 hours of life. Global coverage is 42% and is as high as 84% in the WHO Western Pacific Region, while it is only estimated to be at 6% in the WHO African region

Human papillomavirus is the most common viral infection of the reproductive tract and can cause cervical cancer in women, other types of cancer, and genital warts in both men and women. The HPV vaccine was introduced in 111 Member States by the end of 2020. Since many large countries have not yet introduced the vaccine and vaccine coverage decreased in 2020 in many countries – global coverage with the final dose of HPV is now estimated at 13%. This is a proportionally large reduction from 15% in 2019.

Yellow fever

How Do Mandatory Vaccination Policies Vary By Region

We found that assessing policies across WHO regions European, Americas, Western Pacific, African, and Eastern Mediterranean was a useful way to break down our analysis of policies worldwide.

In the chart you see a breakdown of the number of countries with a given policy mandate. You can view this by region by using the Change region toggle on the interactive chart.

Europe has a mixture of mandatory and recommended policies. But most European countries 16 out of 28 do not have mandatory vaccination. European countries were among the first to introduce mandatory vaccination for smallpox in the early 19th century, which also led to early push-back. The early introduction and early push-back, along with present-day approaches to foster mutual trust and responsibility between citizens and the health authorities, may be part of the reason why vaccination is often recommended rather than mandated in many European countries.50 Countries of the former-USSR or under the influence of the Eastern Bloc previously had mandatory vaccination, and many kept this policy in the post-USSR era.

Most countries in the Americas 29 out of 35 have mandatory vaccinations. In the USA, vaccination is regulated by individual states though it is mandatory for school entry in all of them. In Canada, only three provinces have legislated mandatory vaccination policies that apply to children enrolling in school.

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Covid Vaccine: How Many People Are Vaccinated In The Uk

BBC News

• Coronavirus pandemic

The UK is ramping up its Covid vaccine booster campaign – part of an attempt to reduce the impact of the new Omicron variant, currently spreading across a number of countries.

With nine in 10 of those aged 12 or over having had a single jab and eight in 10 having had a second, the focus has shifted to boosters, which show promising signs of protecting against illness and death from Omicron.

About 32 million boosters or third doses have been given so far.

Who Has Vaccinated The Most

Of the 197 countries and territories administering vaccines and publishing rollout data, 67 are high-income nations, 103 are middle-income and 27 low-income.

The map below, using figures collated by Our World in Data – a collaboration between Oxford University and an educational charity – shows the total number of doses given per 100 people, mostly first doses.

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Global Immunization: Worldwide Disease Incidence

In 2018, about 86% of the worlds children received vaccines that would protect them against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, and measles. Immunizations currently prevent 2 million to 3 million deaths every year. Despite this success, more than 1.5 million people worldwide die from vaccine-preventable diseases each year.

The Gap Between Countries

High-income countries represent only 16% of the worlds population, yet some of them have bought enough vaccines to cover their population more than twice.

According to a ONE’s Policy team study, as of March the worlds richest countries had collectively bought 1 billion more doses than their citizens need. The rest of the world had only been able to secure 2.5 billion doses not enough to vaccinate their populations.

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Mapping Our Unvaccinated World

Today 2.7 billion people have yet to receive their first vaccine shot against COVID-19. The chart below shows where they live.

The charts shows a cartogram which distorts land mass in proportion to the absolute number of unvaccinated people. Most of the unvaccinated live in the developing world, which comprise upper-middle-income, lower-middle-income and low-income countries . Within the developing world, most of the unvaccinated live in the lower-middle-income and low-income countries .

The absolute number of the unvaccinated is a function of both population size and the unvaccinated rate . In the above chart, we combine these two perspectives. Land mass provides the absolute perspective: the number of unvaccinated, whereas color shows the relative perspective: the unvaccinated rate.

South Asia looks a lot better in terms of the relative metric: a larger share of the population has been vaccinated already. Still, given the huge population size of South Asia, the number of unvaccinated remains very large. Contrast this with Africa, where the large numbers reflect both the large population size of the continent and a lack of progress on the vaccination campaign.

Lets have a deeper look at the numbers by vaccination status .

The chart show that 87% of the unvaccinated live in the developing world . The lower-middle-income countries alone count 1.3 billion unvaccinated or 48% of the global total.

Why Is Vaccine Inequity A Problem

There are health, economic and moral implications for failing to vaccinate the world as evenly and fairly as possible.

Vaccine inequity is the worlds biggest obstacle to ending this pandemic and recovering from COVID-19, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization , said last month.

Failure to vaccinate could see new vaccine-resistant variants emerge, threatening the health of the entire global population. As many have put it, ‘nobody is safe until everybody is safe.’

There have also been warnings that an inequitable vaccine rollout will hit the socioeconomic recovery in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Data shows that low-income countries could have added $38 billion to their GDP forecast for 2021 if they had similar vaccine rates as high-income countries.

Numerous world leaders have also emphasized the moral obligation to ensuring the vaccine rollout is equitable.

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Coronavirus: How Will The World Vaccinate Seven Billion

Teams across the world are working to develop a vaccine that will be effective against Covid-19.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has called it “the most urgent shared endeavour of our lifetimes”.

But away from the high-tech science of finding a winning formula, what about the logistics of rolling out a vaccine to seven billion people worldwide?

In the UK, the heart of that effort is at the Harwell Science Campus, on an ex-RAF airbase in Oxfordshire.

It is going to be the UK’s Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre , plans for which have been brought forward by Covid-19.

“We’ve really compressed the timeline into almost half. So whereas we were expecting to have it ready at the end of 2022, we’re now hoping to have it online in 2021,” explains Matthew Duchars, chief executive of VMIC.

What’s Being Done About Vaccine Inequity

COVAX, co-led by Gavi, the WHO and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations , is the vaccines pillar of the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator.

Its aim is to accelerate the development and manufacture of COVID-19 vaccines and to ensure fair and equal access for every country around the world.

So far, it’s delivered more than 150 million vaccine doses around the world, with a target of making 2 billion available by the end of 2021. However, in June it warned that short-term supply concerns remain – particularly throughout July and August.

What is the World Economic Forum doing about access to vaccines?

In 2000, Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance was launched at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting in Davos, with an initial pledge of $750 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The aim of Gavi is to make vaccines more accessible and affordable for all – wherever people live in the world.

Along with saving an estimated 10 million lives worldwide in less than 20 years,through the vaccination of nearly 700 million children, – Gavi has most recently ensured a life-saving vaccine for Ebola.

At Davos 2016, we announced Gavi’s partnership with Merck to make the life-saving Ebola vaccine a reality.

Read more about the Vaccine Alliance, and how you can contribute to the improvement of access to vaccines globally – in our Impact Story.

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People Do Not Know How Well We Actually Do In Global Vaccination

Today vaccines protect millions of people around the world from infectious diseases. In this fight we are much, much further ahead than most people realize.

The first chart shows the evidence for this misperception. In this chart we plotted the survey responses that people gave when they were asked How many of the worlds 1-year old children today have been vaccinated against some disease?. The correct answer was 85.8% this is the share of 1-year olds that received the third dose of the combination vaccine that protects against Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis .

But in all countries in which people were surveyed people were much too pessimistic about the global coverage. Americans think that only 35% of the worlds children are vaccinated, the true coverage is 50 percentage points higher.22

In Japan people were even more pessimistic and thought that only 18% were vaccinated. As it is often the case in questions on global development we again see that people in poorer countries have a more accurate view of the world: in Kenya and Senegal people thought that vaccines reach around two thirds of all children in the world, but even these highest estimates are 20 percentage points too low.

We hugely underestimate global vaccination coverage23

Peoples view on vaccination coverage is outdated by more than three decades

We have created a chart that shows the absolute number of one-year-olds who have received the vaccinations.

When Will We All Be Vaccinated

In the U.S., people age 12 or older are now eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. Just over half of the population has received at least one COVID-19 shot, although the pace of vaccination has slowed in recent months.

Track U.S. vaccinations:Daily updates by county and state

According to the analysis from the Duke Global Health Innovation Center, more than 12 billion doses could be produced this year, making it possible to vaccinate 70% of the world population. However, it may take longer for those doses to be administered.

A proposal to temporarily suspend certain intellectual property rights on COVID-19 vaccines until herd immunity has been reached is now backed by around 100 countries.

It is also supported by a coalition of organizations called the Peoples Vaccine Alliance, which includes the United Nations HIV/AIDS agency UNAIDS and human rights group Amnesty International. Discussions at the World Trade Organization are underway.

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Covid Vaccines: Why Do They Get Wasted How Many People Are Vaccinated

In pharmacies and other medical establishments across the United States, over 82 million COVID-19 vaccine doses have been thrown away, according to NBC News. This number accounts for over 11% of total vaccines produced by the federal government.

The breakdown: Walmart and CVS were responsible for 25% of the waste, according to Axios.

• Rite Aid, Costco and other pharmacies were also reported to have wasted more than 25% of the vaccines they received.
• NBC reports that two states Alaska and Oklahoma threw away more than a quarter of the vaccines they received. Alaska discarded 27% of the 1 million vaccines received, and Oklahoma discarded 28% of almost 4 million doses.
• The Associated Press reports even more waste across the country 1.5 million doses in Michigan, 1 million in Illinois, 1.45 million in North Carolina and nearly 725,00 doses in Washington.

Diseases Preventable Through Vaccination

The chart shows the number of global deaths caused by some of the most common and serious vaccine-preventable diseases.

There are more diseases for which vaccines are available now and even more are under development currently. The WHO publishes list of 26 diseases for which vaccines are available including Japanese encephalitis, pneumococcal disease, varicella/chicken pox, HPV, Hepatitis A and rotavirus.

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Majorities In 20 Countries And Areas Including Russia Would Refuse

Nearly three in 10 worldwide said they would not agree to be vaccinated, and another 3% said they did not know or refused to answer together, these translate into roughly 1.3 billion adults who were unwilling to be vaccinated at the time of the survey.

Heat map. Percentages worldwide who say they would not take a vaccine for the coronavirus if it were made available to them at no cost.

Efforts to vaccinate people will clearly face much stronger headwinds in some countries than others. Majorities of adults in nearly two dozen countries and areas worldwide firmly said they would not agree to be vaccinated. Further, people in many of these countries have yet to see more than 2% of their population vaccinated.

Unsurprisingly, the list includes Russia and countries in Eastern Europe where few people said they would take vaccines, but it is led by sub-Saharan African countries Gabon and Cameroon, where two-thirds of the populations would not take vaccines if offered. Majorities in Senegal, Togo and Namibia also said they would not take the vaccine.