Hooray, the vaccine’s here. Almost. The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine says the UK must double its vaccination target to two million a week to avoid a third/fourth wave this year.
Easter does depend on who you consider to be at greatest risk from the virus. Statistically those at greatest risk are those over 50 and those with an underlying illness. The government hopes to be vaccinating one million people a week by the middle of January, this month. Let’s assume, probably erroneously that everyone in care homes and all the care home workers have had their first dose (which many of us will know they haven’t), the vaccination programme looks like this.
Group 1 Care home residents and workers – 1.1m – done
Group 2 People aged over 80 – 3.4m, frontline health and social care workers – 1.6m – 5 weeks
Group 3 People aged 75 to 79 – 2.3m – 2.3 weeks
Group 4 Clinically vulnerable – 2.2m, those aged 70-74 -3.3m – 5.5 weeks.
So those people will be done by Easter, if we meet the schedule. And that takes us up to 13 weeks when all of those will need a second vaccination. It is more than likely that it will be the end of June before they have all had the proper course of two vaccinations. But how about the others at risk?
Group 5 People ages 65-69 – 3.4m – 3.4 weeks
Group 6 People aged 16-64 with underlying health conditions – 8.5m – 8.5 weeks.
That is another three months before they have had their first jab. We add another three for the second jab and… we’ve reached Christmas.
Groups 7,8 and 9 are people aged between 50 and 64 – 12.9m – 13 weeks.
It will be June of 2022 before those at greatest risk have been vaccinated.
The current population of the UK is 68m. To achieve herd immunity we need at least 90% of the population to have had covid or the vaccine, that is 61.2 million. If we remove those over 50, health workers, carers, and with underlying illnesses etc, we have a balance of 22.5m whose two injections will take another 45 weeks which takes us past Christmas 2022 and towards Easter 2023. The PM said Easter but did not specify a year.
(Population figures from Office of National Statistics data from 2019. Current population from Worldometer which draws its statistics from the United Nations, World Bank and OECD.)