UK COVID-19 Vaccine Program Estimated Rollout & Tracker
Summary:
The datasets as detailed below this summary and as analysed as of 26-Mar-21 indicate that:
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First dose vaccinations should be offered to all adults by 7-Jul-21 (Ref. Scenario 3).
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Second dose vaccinations should be offered to all adults by 28-Jul-21 (Ref. Scenario 3).
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Required average total vaccination rate going forwards to deliver second doses within 12 weeks is 449k/day (Ref. Scenario 3).
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Current trend total vaccination rate is 631k/day (Ref. Scenario 2), which is 141% of the required average rate and therefore supports achieving the schedule shown in Scenario 3.
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As of 5-Mar-21 the second dose rate has seen the third consecutive day at significantly increased levels. If this trend continues this will alleviate the 12 week pinch point coming up in May as the result of first dose vaccination rates that were so high 3 months earlier.
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44.2% of the population have received their first dose vaccines.
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4.5% of the population have received their second dose vaccines.
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32.9% of the population should now have a good level of immunity as a result of the vaccination program to date. This is based on published COVID-19 vaccines trials data indicating that good immunity develops around 3 weeks after vaccination.
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The unvaccinated population remaining after the current vaccination program is too large to achieve herd immunity against the more contagious coronavirus variants, even if the current mix of vaccines provide good immunity for those who have received them.
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Therefore, future vaccination programs targeting coronavirus variants will need to try harder to combat vaccine hesitancy and will also need to consider vaccinating children.
Data sources and their interpretation:
In estimating the UK COVID-19 vaccine rollout program a few public domain datasets have been gathered from various sources. It is unknown how reliable or representative these data are.
The UK Population dataset has been taken from https://www.ons.gov.uk/ for 2018 and right-shifted by 3 years to 2021. The resulting population has then been reduced over this 3 year period on the basis of mortality doubling every 11 years, up from usual 8 years, simply because this fits the population data better. Subsequently, the population is further reduced according to age group by the tragic 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 as of circa the start of the vaccination program.
The Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation Priority Cohort sizes have been taken from here:
Priority Group | JVCI Cohort | People | Running Sum |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Care home residents | 300,000 | 300,000 |
1 | Residential care workers | 500,000 | 800,000 |
2 | 80+ | 3,300,000 | 4,100,000 |
2 | Healthcare Workers | 2,400,000 | 6,500,000 |
2 | Social Care Workers | 1,400,000 | 7,900,000 |
3 | 75-79 | 2,300,000 | 10,200,000 |
4 | 70-74 | 3,200,000 | 13,400,000 |
4 | Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (under 70) | 1,200,000 | 14,600,000 |
5 | 65-69 | 2,900,000 | 17,500,000 |
6 | At Risk (under 65) | 7,300,000 | 24,800,000 |
7 | 60-64 | 1,800,000 | 26,600,000 |
8 | 55-59 | 2,400,000 | 29,000,000 |
9 | 50-54 | 2,800,000 | 31,800,000 |
Total | Priority groups 1-9 | 31,800,000 | |
Rest of adult population | 21,000,000 | ||
Total vaccination group | 52,800,000 |
The priority group population from the above is 32 million, however this analysis has derived a figure of 35 million and conservatively this figure is used. Incomplete uptake will probably number several million in the priority groups alone. The vaccination uptake within the JVCI priority groups was initially estimated at 30 million in this analysis, i.e. 5 million people electing not to take the vaccine. This was based on 90% uptake for those 80 years or more down to 70% uptake for 18 year olds, and linear interpolation in between. This figure was circa 10 million when also considering adults outside priority groups 1-9 not electing to take the vaccine.
It was reported on 07-Feb-21, however, that vaccination uptake has been higher than expected in the over 70's, at over 90%. To compliment this figure it is therefore assumed the opposite end of the age spectrum will also see similarly better than expected uptake, and an uptake of 75% for 18 year olds is now assumed. Revising the uptake assumptions as described leads to an increase in uptake of circa 2.5 million people.
Three vaccination rollout scenarios have been considered. The first scenario is a target-based rollout and involves considering an ambitious but achievable constant vaccination rate. An ambitious but achievable vaccination rate is important to achieve and is therefore a reasonable vaccination rate to expect once planned production approaches capacity. The second scenario involves an important elucidating counterpoint for comparison, based on what has been actually achieved to date, and uses the recent trend in that vaccination data to indicate the vaccination rate going forward. Around 21-Feb-21 the vaccination rate trend started to decline, and using the approach of delivering all dose 1 vaccinations before starting dose 2 means the gap between first and second jabs going forward has increased significantly over the 12 week requirement. Therefore, a third scenario considers the average daily vaccine rate required to meet the 12 week second dose commitments at expense of dose 1 rates, and then maintaining this new total dose rate to completion of both dose 1 and dose 2 in the adult population.
Scenario 1: Projected vaccination rate set at a constant 0.5 million doses per day going forwards from the latest day's vaccination data.
Scenario 2: Projected vaccination rate set at yesterday's point on the line through the respective averages of the last two fortnights' data.
Scenario 3: Projected average vaccine rollout rate required to meet the 12 week window for second dose vaccinations.
The trendline for Scenario 2 originally considered a simple linear regression through the data over a characteristic period. However, as it became apparent this data also exhibits regular peaks and troughs through each week it was found a smoother approach was to consider moving weekly or moving fortnightly averages, and so create a best fit line that is not cyclically influenced by regular patterns in the timeline.
The reality is that the vaccine rollout is not reaching all cohorts and all areas at the same rate, and as a result some areas are vaccinating patients out of sequence, with some instances of spare doses reaching shelf-life, or refused doses, often being reallocated to next best priority group members that are available, for example to front line volunteers. This is of course the right thing to do, but does result in diffusion across priority group boundaries and means that capturing the stages of the rollout in any kind of succinct and accessible overview is, well, impossible. Nonetheless, presenting plausible and reasonable hypothetical rollout scenarios that assume cohort and age priorities being honoured nationwide, then updating with actual rollout data as they come through, is still useful and is the approach being used here.
As such, the vaccine tracker graphs below will be updated daily with the new vaccination figures as published on the coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/vaccinations webpage. Similarly, all data, assumptions and analysis remain under review and will probably be tweaked for new data and corrections as they come to light.
As can be seen from the graphs below the daily vaccination data are quite erratic, so the predicted rollout milestones summarised above do vary from day to day.
Comments are welcome via the Contact page or Twitter and I will try to incorporate any suggestions.
Stay safe!
Julian
The graphs for Scenarios 1, 2 and 3 are shown below as image sequences over the evolution of the rollout period to date, with projected vaccination data incrementally updated day by day with latest actual data. These image sequences can be viewed one at a time or played as an animation. On some devices the animation can be quite flickery (even after the first run through that caches all the images), in which case just below them are auto-playing movies of the same media - no flicker but not as pin sharp as the image sequences.
Scenarios 1, 2 and 3 timeline evolutions as graph sequences:
The gallery navigation and play buttons are shown on mouse roll-over. The navigation buttons are located left and right of the graphs while the play button is located top-right. Clicking on an image will open the higher resolution original, this higher resolution mode also has image navigation controls but lacks the animation option.
Scenario 1 - Projected vaccine rollout rate set at a constant 0.5 million doses per day going forwards from the latest day's data.
Scenario 2 - Projected vaccine rollout rate set at the endpoint of the trendline through the last 28 days' vaccination data.
Scenario 3 - Projected vaccine rollout rate required to meet the 12 week window for second vaccinations.
Scenarios 1, 2 and 3 timeline evolutions as graph animations:
Tips: Hit refresh to synchronise the animations. Click an animation to pause or restart playing. Double tap for mobile devices.
Scenario 1 - Projected vaccine rollout rate set at a constant 0.5 million doses per day going forwards from the latest day's data.
Scenario 2 - Projected vaccine rollout rate set at the endpoint of the trendline through the last 28 days' vaccination data.
Scenario 3 - Projected vaccine rollout rate required to meet the 12 week window for second vaccinations.
