Australia vaccination coverage is clawing its way up

Australia is clawing its way up from the bottom of the pack of wealthy nations in the COVID-19 vaccination race. After months spinning its wheels near the start line, we are now roaring towards the vaccination levels that will allow a safer re-entry into the world. But there is still a distance to go.

Of all the nations home to at least 500,000 people, Australia currently ranks 48th on partial vaccination levels, according to the latest data compiled by Our World In Data. Australia is 56th in the world for full vaccination coverage. Among the relatively wealthy OECD nations, Australia still ranks near the bottom of the pack. But the nation is now clambering upwards, with one of the fastest vaccination speeds in the world.

If you were to include Australia’s most vaccinated state or territory — the ACT — it would be four places ahead of Australia as a whole. Western Australia — the state with the lowest level — would be three places behind. There are about nine countries between Australia and its phase B target of 70 per cent of the 16-plus population (roughly 56 per cent of the total population).

Excluding the smallest countries in the world, Australia is administering doses right now faster than all nations except Cuba, Cambodia, and Iran. One of the reasons for that is there is less competition: Many countries are slowing down their rollouts, with the bulk of their populations already fully vaccinated.

How countries are going faster

The three fastest countries at the moment started their vaccination rollouts months after the world leaders, ramping up only when more supplies became available.

Cuba’s President, Miguel Diaz-Canel, last week told the UN’s 2021 General Assembly meeting he expected his country to reach “full immunisation” by the end of the year.Cuban scientists have produced three coronavirus vaccines, which the nation has also started exporting, even without them being officially recognised by the World Health Organization.

Cambodia is primarily using China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines in its inoculation program, and has now started administering doses to children aged between six and 11.

Australia has exceeded the highest first-dosing speeds seen in the United States and United Kingdom, but there are still dozens of countries that were vaccinating even faster than our current speed earlier in the pandemic. Australia is likely to overtake the double-dose vaccination levels of the United States in October.

The developing world remains unvaccinated

While Australia works its way up the international rankings, it is leaving behind great swathes of the globe. Only about 2.2 per cent of people in the lowest-income countries have been at least partially vaccinated, according to figures from Our World In Data. That is around one-30th the vaccination rate in the highest-income countries. 

The majority of countries with the lowest vaccine coverage are in Africa

Most of the least vaccinated nations are in Africa, where leaders have struggled to access the doses they need. “Unfortunately Africa, with negligible vaccination rate, is left waiting for the drips from the surplus of others due to vaccine nationalism.”

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) goal is to have 40 per cent of each country’s population vaccinated by the end of the year, rising to 70 per cent by the middle of next year.

“To reach those targets, we need 2 billion doses for low and lower-middle-income countries right now,” WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said this week at a meeting convened by Germany and France on pandemic recovery and climate change.

“We call on the countries and companies that control the global supply of vaccines to swap their near-term vaccine deliveries with COVAX and Abbott to fulfil their dose-sharing pledges immediately and to facilitate the immediate sharing of technology, know-how and intellectual property.