COVID Corner
COVID Corner
There is finally a light at the end of the tunnel. We’ve been looking at a mirage for over a year now, but this time the glimmer of hope is real. The most anticipated vaccines of all time are here. They are rolling out around the globe at unprecedented rates, but is it fast enough?
Countdown to ‘Normal’
As you already know, there are lots of great resources out there that compile the daily data around COVID-19. We’ve had our eyes glued to the John’s Hopkins Dashboard since March 2020. More recently, Bloomberg’s Vaccine Tracker has become our daily coffee update.
However, these tools primarily look backwards - they don’t try to make any projections. It was only at our request that Bloomberg added the “At this rate, it will take an estimated __ months to cover 75% of the population” ticker to their page.
After a year of looking backwards, we’re ready to look forward. Of course, like everything, take this information with a grain of salt. We don’t have the inside scoop about what the White House is planning and we don’t have any connections to Big Pharma to know where exactly their production stands.
While history is not a guarantee of future performance, it is one of the best guides we have. Therefore, we have used trends and targets to create illustrations of when ‘normal’ (or, at least, the ‘new normal’) will resume.
Vaccination Roll-Out
The White House announced on March 2nd that we will have enough vaccines for every adult American by the end of May! How did they speed things up so fast? Equal parts progress and optics.
Approval of the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, including recruiting Merck to help with manufacturing, was critical to this new target. The J&J vaccine requires just 1 dose and can be stored at standard refrigeration temperatures, making production and distribution more than twice as efficient. This is truly phenomenal news!
However, the White House has previously been extremely conservative in their promises. The old target of 100M doses in 100 days, suggests a rate of 1M doses/day, which would take nearly 1.5 years to vaccinate the US population. This was not visionary, as we were already averaging over 1M doses/day by January 23rd.
Population Insights:
260 M ~ US population over 18 years
250 M ~ 75% of US population ~ herd immunity target
Furthermore, there is a lot of weight in what was not promised. They promised the doses would be produced and allocated for Americans, not the administration of the doses. What does this really mean for the vaccine efforts? Production is no longer our bottleneck. The new strategy should focus on vaccine distribution and administration rates. As of March 14th, 107M doses have been administered. J&J/Merck have promised 100M doses by June. This is exceptional progress, but we still have a long way to go.
Therefore, before you go book your first trip in June, keep in mind that it could still be a few months from production to distribution to administration to sufficient antibodies produced to protect you from COVID. Check out the data below to learn more.
Vaccine Contract Timeline:
December 2020: US secures 400M doses from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech by July 31st (45M by 12/31/20, +75M by 3/31/21, +250M by 6/30/21, and +30M by 7/31/21). These 2-dose vaccines would cover 200M people, or ~75% of the US population over 18 years old.
February 2021: Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech accelerate their original schedule, promising 400M doses by June. Biden administration secures an additional 200M doses from Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech by ‘the end of the summer’ (no date given). These 600M total doses would cover 300M people, or 90% of the US population.
March 2021: The White House announced on March 2nd that we will have enough vaccines for every adult American by the end of May.
Assumptions
The data below was compiled by engineers and, like all good engineers, we made A LOT of assumptions. So, before we dig in, take a look at the factors we considered and the values we selected to make a projection about when we will be out of the [COVID] woods:
Assume every dose administered through March 14th was Moderna or Pfizer/BioNTech.
Therefore, all of these required 2 doses to be ‘fully vaccinated’.
Assume that the vaccine administration rate will drop off at the end of the campaign once all that is left are “2nd doses.”
Therefore, we calculated the end of the campaign (assuming vaccinating 75% of the total US population) based on the data and assumptions above, then, for what would be the last 4 weeks (representing the 3-4 weeks between doses), we drop the rate to just 2/3 of the previous max (2nd doses + J&J vaccines). NOTE: This timing is exceptionally difficult to predict since it is highly dependent on how many people are actually willing to get the vaccine.
Appendix
No Longer Phase Limited
At this time, many states have significantly loosened requirements around vaccine eligibility. Therefore, we have chosen to remove the phase tiers from our most recent projection. Now, the greatest concern is likely convincing enough people to get the vaccine. Therefore, we included the “Willing Adults” rate of just 69% to indicate the gap between willing and those necessary to achieve herd immunity.
No Longer Production Limited
Previously, we looked at production-limited vaccine administration. However, based on the new promised vaccines from the White House, we have determined that production is unlikely to be our bottleneck. Note: The approval of the J&J vaccine has altered how we track vaccine progress. The charts below all trend “vaccinations/day” - which is either 1 shot of the J&J or 2 shots of the P/B or M vaccines. Otherwise, “shots” or “doses” per day represent the actual number of injections. We convert between the two with the assumption that J&J will cover 100M vaccinations (100M doses) and P/B and M will cover the remaining 160M vaccinations (representing 320M doses).
Sources:
https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/covid-vaccine-tracker-global-distribution/
https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/joe-biden-town-hall-02-16-21/h_dcc5457025a71bf4fbdd1d92d42bab35
https://www.cnet.com/health/when-will-you-get-the-covid-19-vaccine-what-to-know-about-the-delay-priority-order-now/
https://qz.com/1949739/how-many-vaccine-doses-will-pfizer-and-moderna-deliver-to-the-us/
Last update: 4/19/21