Over the last couple of months, India’s vaccination programme has picked up pace. 3 times in the last 12 days, India administered 10+ million doses to its adult population. India has administered 710+ million doses to its adult population, with about 543+ million people getting at least 1 dose of the vaccine. This compares with about 376+ million doses being administered in the United States, with 207+ million people having received at least 1 dose.
A lot of commentators use percentage of population vaccinated to compare different geographies; but this is not a very meaningful way for a couple of reasons:
Different countries have different guidelines on which age group is eligible for vaccination. For example, in India only 18+ are eligible, while a few countries in the west, 12+ year olds are eligible.
Each country has substantially different age demography. India has a third of its population under 18 years, while the US / UK have less than 20% of their population under 18.
Hence, it is best to use percentage coverage of "eligible population", to arrive at meaningful conclusions.
In this context, Team Latlong (https://www.latlong.ai/) has been publishing maps every day, on both LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/pnbhatta/) and Twitter (https://twitter.com/BhattaPN) showing the eligible population covered by 1st dose, as also total number of doses administered. Latlong has used eligible population estimates combined with data from Cowin (https://dashboard.cowin.gov.in/) site for this purpose.
As of date India has administered 1st dose to 58% of eligible population; while, the United States has administered 1st dose to 75% of 18+ population and 73% of 12+ population, per data from CDC (https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total). United States has administered 139 doses per 100 adults, while India has administered 77 doses per 100 adults.
One of the data points, which has been greatly speculated is ‘when’ will India reach 100% vaccination of adults and the rate of vaccination to get there by December 31st.
Typically, maps are visualised based on numbers; Team Latlong used this opportunity to create a map of India, of when different states would reach certain vaccine level. For this map, the following data was :
80% of eligible population coverage with 1st dose was considered, since the US has been around the 70% mark for several weeks now.
Vaccination rate for the last 2 weeks (14 days) was considered, as different states are following different strategies to vaccinate: some are doing massive 1-day camps covering 5-6%+ eligible population, while others are doing a steady 0.8% coverage every day.
Based on this, it is estimated that India will reach 80% coverage of its eligible population with first dose of vaccine, by 13th October. The most populous state of Uttar Pradesh is likely to reach 80% coverage of eligible population by 26th October, while economically most critical state of Maharashtra is estimated to do so by 3rd November. 15 states / Union Territories already exceed 80% coverage. Telangana and Chhattisgarh, among states with 10+ million eligible population, are likely to see 80% coverage after mid-December. 3 states in the north-east are outliers: Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland are projected to reach 80% first dose coverage only in middle of next year. These numbers could change in 1-2 days, as the last 14 days has seen very little vaccination in these states.
This visualisation of maps using a date range, is a new feature being implemented in Latlong’s No-Code Analytics platform, Aaloka. There are some more exciting features, which will be released for use, in a few days.
Next Team Latlong will produce a map of estimated date by which India and different states are likely to reach 150 doses per 100 adults. This number has also been chosen looking at the US data.
For now, we all have our eyes peeled on 13th October!
Comments