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10 Feb, 6 tweets, 3 min read
Wed Feb 10 Weekly Vaccination Update:

New vaccinations has been stuck at 900k-1M per day for the past three weeks, while second doses have nearly tripled.

New doses distributed remains stubbornly low, so this pattern may continue...

covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-i…
This seems to confirm analysis announced by White House Data Director @cyrusshahpar46 that shows that the majority of delivered first doses have already been administered.

The bottleneck is supply.

California is now vaccinating at 4x the rate of new infections, a tremendously improvement over January.

Florida took a different route but with has equally impressive results thus far. Their rate of new 2nd doses is among the fastest in the country.

No politics, just data.
Here are the vaccination rates for all 50 states over the past 7 days (1st doses on left, 2nd doses on right).

Alaska, West Virginia, Utah leading the pack for 2nd doses.

covid19-projections.com/maps-infections
The continued surge in new variants and the rollout of the J&J vaccine mean that overall vaccine efficacy may end up being lower than 90-95%.

Combined with vaccine hesitancy, it is possible that we do not reach the levels required for herd immunity in 2021.
Nevertheless, herd immunity is not a hard threshold, and being close to herd immunity may be sufficient to prevent large outbreaks.

I don't think our goal should be "herd immunity".

Look out for a more detailed thread on this later this week.

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More from @youyanggu

Youyang Gu Profile picture
11 Feb
The recent focus on reaching herd immunity through vaccination may be overblown.

My modeling suggests that it is increasingly unlikely that the US will reach the immunity levels required for theoretical herd immunity in 2021.

covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-i…

(A 🧵 w/ my thoughts) Image
This conclusion is based on the following new developments over the past month:

- Remained high levels of vaccine hesitancy
- New variants that may lower vaccine efficacy
- Rollout of the J&J vaccine (efficacy ~70%)
- Delayed arrival of the children vaccine
That said, herd immunity does not have a hard threshold, and being close to herd immunity may be sufficient to prevent large outbreaks.

Our goal should not be to reach "herd immunity", but to reduce COVID-19 deaths & hospitalizations so that life can return to normal.
Read 12 tweets
Youyang Gu Profile picture
3 Feb
Wed Feb 3 Weekly Vaccination Update:

It was a disappointing week. New vaccinations decreased compared to last week.

This is also the first week where fewer doses were distributed than administered.

covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-i…
1st doses remained under 1M/day while 2nd doses were up 60% compared to last week (236k -> 381k a day).

The clear pattern that is emerging is that states are allocating their limited doses to give out as 2nd doses rather than to vaccinate new people.
Given that the pace of "doses distributed" have also not increased since early January, the outlook is worrisome.

Unless the pace of new distributed doses increases, it currently looks like we may be at a plateau in new vaccinations for a while.
Read 7 tweets
Youyang Gu Profile picture
27 Jan
Wed Jan 27 Weekly Vaccination Update:

Given no unforeseen supply issues, we estimate that the general public can receive the vaccine by April.

We also estimate over 60% of the US adult population will be fully vaccinated by June.

covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-i…
These estimates are driven by data. In the past week, over 1 million doses were administered per day, a 20% week-over-week increase.

While there are news reports of anecdotal supply issues, this has not shown up in the data. If this changes, we will update accordingly.
Nationwide, new infections are decreasing quickly while vaccinations are steadily increasing.

But around 500k people are still being infected per day, double the summer peak.

The drop in infections is more likely due to a post-holiday slowdown rather than vaccinations.
Read 6 tweets
Youyang Gu Profile picture
25 Jan
A month ago, I reported on @CDCgov's overestimate of true infections in the US.

It appears that last week, the CDC significantly lowered their estimates. It now closely matches covid19-projections.com's latest estimate of ~83M infected (~25% of the population).
My thread from last month is below, where I highlight the flaws in the CDC's original estimates (91M infections through November 2020 and a 7:1 infections to case ratio).

Their explanation:

"Since the previous update, CDC has received additional data about the proportion of persons with symptomatic illness who seek [..] testing services. The higher values of health-seeking behavior result in lower estimates of infections"

cdc.gov/coronavirus/20…
Read 9 tweets
Youyang Gu Profile picture
20 Jan
Jan 20 Weekly Update: New vaccinations (750k/day) are still increasing, but at a slower pace. 1st doses saw a 30% increase over last week, compared to 76% increase the week before.

We are the only site that tracks vaccine doses since December: covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-i…
By state, Alaska and West Virginia lead the pack, with over 7% of the population receiving at least 1 dose.

In contrast, Nevada and Alabama have less than 3% of the population receiving at least 1 dose.

See more maps: covid19-projections.com/maps-infection…
As of today, over 14M people have received at least 1 dose, or 4.3% of the population.

36M doses have been distributed. Our "percent doses used" metric is under 50%.

Efficiency can be greatly improved.
Read 5 tweets
Youyang Gu Profile picture
14 Jan
There appears to be an error on the CDC website.

The @CDCgov page currently claims 11M people have initiated COVID-19 vaccination, but the underlying data suggests that it's actually 11M *doses*.

This is quite misleading, and I hope this error is corrected ASAP.
I took some time to correct for this myself. Our vaccination page now breaks down administered doses into 1st & 2nd doses: covid19-projections.com/path-to-herd-i…

According to our estimates, 10M people (not 11.1M) have received at least one dose. Out of those 9M, 1.1M have received both doses.
After this adjustment, the current pace of new vaccinations is ~4M people per week. Even if we double that pace, it would take 9 months to vaccinate everyone.

As of now, ~15% of the daily doses given are used as a 2nd dose (114k / 747k). I expect this fraction to grow over time.
Read 5 tweets

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