Only one in hundred get Covid shot in Pakistan: data

ISLAMABAD: More than 1.08 billion vaccine doses have been administered worldwide, equal to 14 doses for every 100 people. There is already a stark gap between vaccination programmes in different countries, with some yet to report a single dose.

The data is compiled from government sources by the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. A vaccinated person refers to someone who has received at least one dose of a vaccine, and a fully vaccinated person has received all required doses of a vaccine. For the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, a person who is “fully vaccinated” has received two doses.

April 28 data of doses per hundred people shows Seychelles at top with 127 doses, Israel second with 116, while UAE is at third place with 107 doses per hundred persons. In regional countries Maldives has administered 73 doses per hundred people, China 17, India 11, Nepal 7.2, Bangladesh 5.2, Sri Lanka 4.2, Iran 1.1, Pakistan 1 and Afghanistan 0.6.

While vaccine doses remain relatively scarce globally, most countries have focused their early vaccination efforts on priority groups like the clinically vulnerable; people in their 60s, 70s and older; and front-line workers, like doctors and nurses.

There is also a striking divide between continents. Africa has the slowest vaccination rate of any continent, with some countries yet to start mass vaccination campaigns.

Less wealthy countries are relying on a vaccine-sharing arrangement called Covax, which aims to provide two billion doses by the end of the year.

As many as 83 percent of shots that have gone into arms worldwide have been administered in high- and upper-middle-income countries. Only 0.2 percent of doses have been administered in low-income countries.

Most of the vaccines currently in use require two doses for a patient to be fully vaccinated. In February the Food and Drug Administration authorized a one-shot vaccine by pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson for emergency use in the United States.