Weekly Vaccination Update: J&J Pause and EU Supply Schedule

In this prime tracker, we review the latest vaccine developments globally. This week, we’ve added some brief commentary on the Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause and the EU’s Q2 supply schedule. On the details:

Global Outlook (Charts 1, 2, 4 & 5):

• This week, an average of 17.7mn vaccinations were administered globally every day, up 10% WoW (Chart 1). European countries in particular performed well, although a larger share of North America’s population has been vaccinated over the week (Chart 2). In all, 5.8% of the world’s population have now received at least one vaccination dose, up from 4.9% last week, and an estimated 3.5% have immunity to Covid-19.
• On the Johnson & Johnson vaccine distribution delay, the US and South Africa will see an immediate impact. From mid-April to end of May, a third of the US vaccine supply was expected to be made up of the J&J vaccine (Chart 4). Every day lost, will likely mean 730,000 fewer daily doses for the US in April. The EU was also due to receive its first batch in mid-April, and 55mn doses were expected in Q2 – 13.5% of overall supply.

Share of Population Vaccinated:

• European countries, Argentina and India set the pace this week. Hungary vaccinated 5.6% of its population– the largest WoW increase on the list. Also, the population shares that received at least one dose in Spain, Germany and Poland increased by at least a quarter WoW. The same is true for Argentina and India, where 2.4% and 1.7% of their respective populations received a dose this week.
• At the bottom of the list, South Africa has fully vaccinated 0.5% of its population, largely unchanged WoW. Thailand, on the other hand, more than doubled the share of its population that has received their first dose. Interestingly, Canada’s rollout is currently heavily skewed towards administering the first of a two-dose protocol. Meanwhile, the UK has seen a large WoW rise in the share of fully vaccinated individuals – 11.3% have now received their second dose, up from 8% last week.

Doses (Charts 3 & 5):

• Almost all countries expanded vaccination rollouts this week, with Israel, the UK, Turkey, Switzerland, Malaysia and South Africa being the only countries whose daily average doses fell WoW. The largest increases were in Thailand, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Russia. On a population-adjusted basis, Hungary is administering more doses per 100k than any other country on the list. Next is the US, followed by Chile.
• European countries performed particularly well this week. Across the EU, average daily doses are up 34% WoW to 2.1mn. Germany and Spain led the way, and the latter is now vaccinating at a faster per-head-of-population rate than the UK. Supply is also set to increase. Excluding J&J and with the latest 50mn supply boost from Pfizer and BioNTech, 355mn doses are expected to be supplied to the EU in Q2, over a three-fold increase from Q1 (Chart 5). This could push daily doses up to an average of 3.9mn doses a day in Q2, but at the current level of uptake is more likely to be 2.8mn. On a population-adjusted basis, this is still just 60% of the current US vaccination rate.

Immunity:

• Immunity is gained either via the vaccine (blue) or via infection over the last 6 months (orange). Following the large vaccination drive in the UK three weeks ago, the country’s immunity total is 48.2%, up from 43.1% last week. Yet, the recent slowdown has pushed the 80% target back to September 2021. The Czech Republic ranks fifth on total immunity, despite having lower vaccination shares. This is because an estimated 17% have had the virus over the last 6 months.
• Projecting the current two-week vaccination rates forward, Hungary is now set to reach herd immunity by June. The EU’s date has also been pulled forward from Jan 2022 to Nov 2021. The US and Chile are still on target to reach 80% immunity by July.