India, China and US account for 60% of vaccine doses administered globally

More than 2 billion doses of vaccines have been administered globally in nearly six months to fight the Covid-19. This number is against the estimated requirement of nearly 11 billion doses.

To attain some sort of herd immunity against coronavirus, it is estimated that 70 per cent of the world’s population needs to be vaccinated.

As per the data, it can be noted that the pace of the global vaccination drive has been decent, taking into consideration the challenges faced by the countries across the globe.

But has the vaccine distribution been equitable across countries? In terms of percentage coverage of the population, rich countries have had an upper hand by some margin.

And in terms of total number of doses administered, only a few countries account for bulk of what has been distributed .

Data shows that only three countries — India, China and the US — account for more than 60 per cent of all the doses administered so far. These three countries constitute 40 per cent of the global population. They have also been the fastest in terms of average daily doses administered.

Our analysis also shows that countries with higher fatalities per 1,00,000 population have had faster vaccine rollouts so far.

The US with 180 deaths per one lakh population, the UK at 189 deaths, Brazil at 221 and Israel at 74 deaths per one lakh population have been among the countries leading the global vaccination programme along with India and China, as per the data available at Our World in Data as of June 2.

While little is known about Covid 19-related deaths in China, India has seen 25 deaths for every one lakh people.

While calculating the vaccination coverage, we have included the total number of doses administered divided by the population size.

The enhanced vaccination coverage has ensured a consistent drop in new daily Covid-19 cases globally. However, reports of rise in daily new cases in the UK have reignited concerns.

Experts have been saying that not just the pace of vaccination, the way it is done is equally important.

Commenting on India’s vaccination programme, SV Subramanian, Professor of Population Health and Geography, Geographic Insights Lab, Harvard University, in his research note published in the Lancet Global Health said, “Administering vaccines needs to happen systematically with strict enforcement of proper non-pharmacological guidelines. Taking the vaccines to people might be a safer way for a mass vaccination rollout.”