Vaccination progress in the country has accelerated with the arrival of new doses of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine.
But with the current progress, it is said that it will take a total of 3 years to achieve the government’s target herd immunity, according to an analysis conducted by the ABS-CBN Data Analytics Team on data from the Department of Health.
According to ABS-CBN Data Analytics head Edson Guido, the average number of people vaccinated per day jumped to 108,000 in the past week, from 67,000.
However, it is still not enough, he said, to reach the government’s target of 70 million to be vaccinated before the end of the year.
“We still have a long way to go. To reach the target of 70 million people by the end of 2021, the average should be around 600,000 individuals vaccinated daily, from today up to the end of the year. That’s 5.5 times the current pace,” said Guido.
“At this pace, we’ll reach the target of 70 million people in 3.4 years (or by October 2024),” he added.
According to Guido, the government will need to vaccinate 600,000 people per day from now until 2021 to achieve herd immunity.
Herd immunity possible in 3 years with current speed of vaccination: data
The government has already said it plans to speed up the progress of vaccination.
An additional 500,000 doses of the vaccine from Sinovac arrived on Thursday, and more than 2 million doses of Pfizer are expected from COVAX before the end of the month.
The number of vaccination sites continues to increase, reaching 3,850 as of May 18.
The lack of COVID-19 vaccines is a challenge for some local governments, so they cannot afford the vaccination.
The city of Manila has already exhausted the Sputnik V, AstraZeneca, and Pfizer doses reserved for the first dose.
“Ang daming gustong magpabakuna, pero wala kaming maibigay na bakuna. Ang huling dinig ko last week, nasa almost 400,000 na nag nag-register out of 800,000 [needed] to achieve herd immunity. Madali naman, once yung mga tao marinig na may bakuna, nagre-register sila,” said Manila Health Department director Dr. Arnold Pangan.
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