How Soon to See the Vaccine’s Benefits?

Bulletin 93 | John Roberts

The UK government has set a challenging target of immunising over 13 million people by February 15th, representing the most vulnerable groups of society, together with health and care workers (priority groups 1 to 4). This bulletin explores the rate at which we might see the benefits of this programme in terms of the key metrics used to monitor the pandemic.

We expect that the impact of a successful vaccination programme will be most obvious in the hospitalisation and deaths data, with material reductions in hospitalisation starting from mid-February and reported deaths in early March. The impact on cases is expected to be seen sooner, but the reduction is likely to be smaller.

The recent announcement that the second dose of the vaccine will not be administered until twelve weeks after the first, in order to prioritise as many first inoculations as possible, is not discussed in the bulletin.