At the current rate of vaccinations, Australia should hit the federal government’s 80% threshold to ease restrictions by the beginning of December. But only a few countries have reached the levels that Australia will need to – and even fewer have sustained the vaccination rate required for Australia to be done by the end of the year.
In some countries vaccinations have slowed considerably or even stalled as the total number of vaccinated people increased. Israel took just 100 days to vaccinate 55% of its entire population, but another 104 days to go from 55% to 60%.
After the “low hanging fruit” of those with pre-existing conditions, work requirements and other reasons for being prioritised, experts say it’s hard to gauge what the barriers might be to vaccinate 80% of the Australian population aged 16 and over.
On top of logistical challenges, some may not perceive themselves to be at risk of Covid, don’t trust the process or have other objections. Many of the people who need to be vaccinated might never have been vaccinated as adults. There have been few such large-scale vaccination drives aimed at adults.
“Going into this pandemic we were already facing challenges in understanding adult vaccination,” Associate Prof Holly Seale from UNSW said.
“We didn’t have good data to look at across communities, across Australia: where were the gaps in coverage [for vaccines] that were already recommended? And what were the barriers to adults getting vaccinated?”
About 64% of the entire Australian population would need to be fully vaccinated to meet the target of vaccinating 80% of the over-16 population. So far 29 countries have reached this level.
Seale said we are in “uncharted territory” when it comes to reaching this target. Close to 70% of older Australians regularly get the flu vaccine, she said. And adults with chronic health conditions also get a flu jab in large numbers. But younger people and those without chronic health conditions aren’t nearly as responsive.
“When we are looking at adults aged 18-65 who don’t have health conditions, who aren’t occupationally at risk from the flu, we don’t get a huge amount of them vaccinated for the flu every year.”
It is worth noting, however, the motivation to get a Covid vaccine is very different from that for getting a flu vaccine.
While many Australians have not been able to get vaccinated until recently because of age or other eligibility requirements, this is not necessarily the case in countries such as the United States and United Kingdom.
In countries where vaccines were in plentiful supply, Seale said the slow rollout may come down to what she calls “thinking and feeling elements”. These are factors that Australia will likely also encounter as our supply continues to increase.
These include a lack of a perception of risk, the impact of misinformation, people who are “hunkering down”, and those who may have philosophical or religious objections.
In April the United States was for a while vaccinating 1% of its population every day. But even though its vaccination drive began before many others, it has vaccinated less than 55% of its population.
Researchers Andrea Carson, Leah Ruppanner and Shaun Ratcliff found that when surveyed, 18% of Americans said they would not get vaccinated, and 10% were unsure about getting vaccinated.
“The most common reason our US respondents gave us for vaccine hesitancy was concern about side effects – 66% said this. Half said it was because they did not trust the government, 43% selected lack of trust in the mainstream media, and 33% said they did not believe the vaccines worked,” Ratcliff said.
“Nearly as many said they did not believe Covid-19 posed a serious risk to themselves, and almost a quarter that they lacked trust in doctors.”
The data adds up to more than 100% because respondents were able to select more than one option.
Most countries in our dataset took half the time Australia did to reach 5% of their populations fully vaccinated. But, like Australia, the next 5% was much quicker, and most countries seem to have hit their peak when around 20-30% of their populations were vaccinated.
This is where Australia finds itself right now. From there, Canada has largely sustained the pace at less than 10 days for each additional 5% of its population fully vaccinated. Chile, Hungary and Spain have all seen rates slow slightly.
The United Kingdom began to slow after hitting its peak in the 20-25% range. The United Kingdom took almost twice as long to go from 45-50% and 50-55% as it managed in its peak.
After taking longer than even Australia to vaccinate the first 5% of its population, Canada has been taking on average six days to vaccinate another 5% of its population. More than 62% of its population are now vaccinated, a similar level to what Australia hopes to achieve.
Notes and Methods:
Data on vaccinations by country sourced from Our World in Data.
Countries with small populations were excluded from the dataset, and then only those with greater than 60% fully vaccinated were selected.
The Netherlands, United Arab Emirates, Singapore, Iceland and some other countries were excluded due to inconsistent data reporting.
The vaccine rollout for each country was chunked into increments of 5%. The initial date was set as the date of first vaccination.
The days between the maximum values in each chunk were used to calculate the number of days required for each additional 5% fully vaccinated.
