The Government may be able to break its losing streak by hitting their vaccination target this week, after missing the last three week’s targets. This week’s target has been reduced to 84,000 after we missed our target of 92,000 last week. Two weeks ago our target was 100,000 doses administered a week.
Between Monday the 8th and Tuesday the 9th, the last day we have date for, we administered 23,712 doses. Previous weeks have seen the number peak over Wednesday and Thursday before declining sharply over the weekends, but the relatively strong opening to the week means we are on track to hit the target.
The total number of doses administered, as of the 9th, was 553,161, with 396,089 of those being the 1st dose, and 157,072 of those being 2nd doses.
At current trends we will fail to hit the Government’s target of administering 1,250,000 doses by the end of March by a substantial margin. Hitting this week’s target would see us having administered 609,768 doses by the end of this week. That gives us slightly more than two weeks, March 15th to 31st, to administer more vaccines, 640,232, than have been administered over the entire length of the vaccination programme to date. Doing that would require us to administer 37,660 doses a day on all the 17 remaining days in March, more than three times the current rate.
The Government has said that targets are being missed due to issues with vaccine supply, particularly the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, the Government had previously said that delays in the AstraZeneca supply had been accounted for when determining the target. It also appears that we will miss the target by a far-greater amount than could be explained as being due to delays with AstraZeneca alone.
The average number of doses administered per day, over the last seven days, is now 12,385. 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. 108,932 of these had received their first dose as of the 9th 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.