How vaccines are affecting Covid-19 outbreaks globally

Despite their life-saving capabilities, many countries have yet to administer enough doses to reap the full benefits

Nearly six months after the first Covid-19 vaccines were approved for emergency use, Guardian analysis shows that the vast majority of the world is yet to see a substantial benefit.

Supply shortages, safety concerns, public apathy and slow rollouts have resulted in most countries still being reliant on onerous lockdowns and other quarantine measures to reduce the severity of their outbreaks.

Clear gaps have opened between the handful of countries where vaccination levels are high, those struggling to ramp up their programmes and the many, mostly poor countries that have received only a trickle of vaccine doses so far.

Mapping changes in death rates since 31 January against vaccination rates in each country gives a snapshot of the state of the race to vaccinate the world against the virus. Here is what it tells us.

Change in deaths since 31 January (%)
Daily average deaths
Vaccine doses per 100 people to date

Vaccines are yet to turn the tide

More than 900m vaccine doses have been administered around the world so far, but it is still too early to see a global trend between countries’ vaccination rates and recent changes in their death rates. Scientists say country-level data show vaccines are already reducing deaths in countries such as Israel and the UK. They are among the handful to reach the target zone of high vaccination rates and falling deaths since the beginning of 2021.

Most countries with high vaccination rates are seeing deaths fall

Most countries that have managed to give at least 50 vaccine doses for every 100 of their people are now seeing a steady decline in death rates. This includes the UK, where all top-priority people have now been offered a vaccine and deaths are down over 95% since January.

But vaccinations alone are not enough

Even with relatively high vaccination rates, the virus can still surge if social distancing is relaxed too soon. Chile is the clearest example, where deaths attributed to the Brazilian P1 variant are growing despite an aggressive vaccination campaign.

Developing countries are falling behind

Most poor or lower-middle income countries are nowhere near the target zone, with all but three of these 76 countries having rates below 10 doses per 100 people. Many are experiencing a resurgence in deaths since the end of January driven by deadly new Covid-19 variants.

But even wealthier countries are struggling to vaccinate their populations

Vaccine shortages as well as pauses due to safety concerns are slowing rollouts even in countries that have reserved enough doses to vaccinate their people several times over. Wealthy states are among the many still a long way from the target zone.

Opening up, and staying open, is a realistic hope for only a few

More than 20 countries have significantly relaxed the lockdowns they had in place during the surge in cases earlier in the year. Three of these – Israel, the Seychelles and the UK – have a vaccine rate of over 50 per 100 people, but the majority of those opening up still have little vaccine protection. Lockdowns have worked to reduce deaths in many of these countries, but only those in the highly-vaccinated target zone can realistically hope to break the cycle of relaxing and reinstituting social-distancing measures.

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Data

Vaccination rate data is sourced from Our World in Data and shows the total vaccinations in a particular country for every 100 people. Countries that have not recorded a vaccination rate to date have not been included.

Deaths data is from Johns Hopkins University. The change in deaths since 31 January is calculated by working out the percentage change in deaths between the two-week period to 31 January and the two-week period to 19 April.

Countries that do not yet have a documented vaccination rate are excluded. Countries with more than a 1,000% increase, and fewer than five deaths in the two weeks to 31 January, were excluded so that low baselines did not distort the international picture.

Lockdown stringency data is from the Oxford Covid-19 government response tracker. The change is calculated by comparing a country’s average stringency score in February to its average stringency score in April. A change of -10 or less was used to identify those countries that have opened up significantly in the last two months.