Saturday the 20th, the last day we have data for, saw 6,179 vaccines administered. This is the worst performance on a Saturday since the 12th of February, before GPs began to administer vaccines, which saw only 3,023 administered.
The low numbers were likely caused by the Government’s decision to ignore the advice of the European Medicines Agency and stop the administration of AstraZeneca vaccines. The Government has now reversed that decision.
We are on track to miss our target of administering 1.25 million doses by the end of March by a substantial margin. In order to hit that target we would need to administer 574,054 additional vaccines between Sunday the 21st and Wednesday the 31st, a rate of 52,186 vaccines per day. That is more than six times higher than our current daily average, and that average is falling.
The total number of doses administered, as of the 20th, was 675,946, with 492,106 of those being the 1st dose, and 183,840 of those being 2nd doses. The average number of doses administered per day, over the last seven days, is now 8,267, the lowest it has been since the 17th of February.
Two weeks ago the Government set a target of administering 10,000 vaccines to people in Cohort 4 each week. Cohort 4 consists of people “aged 16-69 at very high risk.” After nearly two full weeks we have only administered 5,370 vaccines to people in this Cohort, not the 20,000 we should have.
Monday the 15th of February 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. 176,343 of these had received their first dose as of the 20th of March.
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.