The mass vaccination campaign against COVID-19 seems to have gained momentum in Spain: according to the Minister of Health, 1.2 million vaccines will be received from Pfizer every Monday in April, and last Thursday a consignment with more than one million doses of AstraZeneca vaccines.
According to data from the Ministry of Health, 8,548,598 doses have so far been administered in our country, and 2,841,148 people have received the complete vaccination schedule. How is the situation if we buy with that of other countries and regions of the world? To begin with, the pace is very similar to that of the rest of the European Union (EU) countries, since the availability of vaccines is the same. With the data from Our World in Data updated to April 3, the average number of people who had received the full guideline in the EU was 5.29% of the population (in Spain the percentage is 6.08%). If we look at people who have received at least one dose of vaccine, in the EU the percentage is 12.59% and in Spain 12.21%. Figures, therefore, are still very far from the expected 70% of fully vaccinated people expected to have this summer.
The fastest-moving countries
Israel is the country that advances the fastest with mass vaccination, and on April 3 the percentage of the population that had received the complete guideline was 55.66%. Furthermore, almost 70% of Israelis have received at least one dose of the vaccine. It is followed by Chile, with 20.12% of its population fully vaccinated (36.31% have received at least one dose), and the United States with 17.90% (31.76 with at least one dose).
The case of the United Kingdom is different: if we look at the total percentage of people who have received the complete vaccination schedule, we will see that this is not much higher than the average for the European Union: 7.93%. However, 46.44% of its population has received at least one dose of vaccine. This is because the United Kingdom has followed the strategy of vaccinating, in principle, with a single dose, in order to be able to achieve a higher percentage of partially immunized people very quickly. This decision is somewhat controversial and debatable from a scientific point of view: as we explained in this article about the immunity generated after the first dose of vaccine, administering just one dose could favor the emergence of new variants capable of evading the immune response that triggers the vaccine.
The countries furthest behind
At the opposite extreme, the campaign progresses very slowly in continents such as Asia, where only 2.32% of the population has received at least one dose of vaccine, and in Africa with 0.57%. In the rapid race of large-scale vaccination, and as the World Health Organization reminds us, it is no use that some countries are fully immunized and others are not: we live in a globalized world and the pandemic can only be contained when everyone, rich and poor, can access vaccines.
With respect to other areas, in the case of South America the average number of people who have received at least one dose is 7.13%, although in some countries there is no exact information and the case of Chile stands out, which as we have seen before is one of the countries in which mass vaccination is advancing the fastest. For North America, the average is 20.57%, although the data is also not very representative, with countries like the United States with very advanced vaccination and others like Mexico in which the percentage of people who have received at least one dose is 6.13, a figure similar to that of Russia with 5.10%.
