At current trends the Government is likely to miss, by a substantial margin, its target of administering 1.25 million doses of vaccines by the 31st of March. We had administered, as of the 2nd of March, 460,640 doses.
Hitting this target would require us to administer 789,360 doses over a 29-day period, a rate of 27,219 doses administered a day. Over the last week of February, we averaged 11,884 doses a day, the week before that, the first week in which GPs became involved in vaccination efforts, we averaged 11,242 doses a day.
There has been a roughly 5.7% increase in vaccination numbers, week-on-week, since the GPs came on board. If that trend were to continue, we would expect to administer roughly 430,000 vaccines during March. That would mean we would miss the Government’s target by roughly 360,000 doses, or 28% of the target.
It is important to state that it is entirely possible, and possibly even likely, that this rate will rise, and that we have limited data to draw on given that the GPs only became involved in this process two weeks ago. The 360,000 doses should be seen as a ceiling for how many doses we could miss the target by rather than as a prediction that we will miss the target by 360,000; we may not miss the target at all.
The average number of doses administered per day, over the last seven days, is now 12,019. The average number of doses administered per day has slightly more than doubled since the it first became possible to put together 7-day vaccination averages on the 9th of February.
Monday the 15th saw GPs begin to administer vaccines to people aged 85 and older, who are part of “Cohort 3” in the Government’s vaccination schedule. The CSO estimates that there are 490,000 people to be vaccinated in Cohort 3, which also includes those 70 and older who are not in long-term residential care. 63,030 of these had received their first dose as of the 2nd of March.
The total vaccination doses administered is now 460,640, with 316,059 of those being the 1st dose, and 144,581 of those being 2nd doses.
Daily reporting of vaccinating numbers only goes back to the 3rd of February, meaning that the 9th of February is the earliest day from which we can show total doses administered over a seven-day period. On the 9th of February, the daily average number of doses administered was 5,642, with 39,495 doses having been administered between the 3rd and the 9th.