Question: As companies strain to produce sufficient vaccine quantities to meet overwhelming demand, when can we expect that there will be sufficient vaccines to cover healthy adults 30-40 working from home (a non-prioritized group)? Or is vaccination not as important in this age group since the majority of the adult population would have been vaccinated by the time we reach this group?

Answer: Healthy adults <65 years of age who are not essential workers will be vaccinated in general population vaccination campaigns (Phase 2, Table 1).  When it comes to timing of the general population vaccination campaigns, I’m going to turn to some simple math and make some simple assumptions, which I’ve described below.  If the assumptions hold, I think we could expect the general population vaccination campaign to kick into gear in the summer and reach 80% coverage by end-September.  And given how quickly we moved between earlier phases, I suspect that we’ll start the general population vaccination campaigns as early as May/June.  Of course, this estimate is super back-of-the-envelope and overly simplistic, but it’s at least a starting point to set some expectations.  Finally, vaccination is important for all age groups, even non-prioritized ones!   

1. The US has a population of ~332 million, of whom ~66 million are ages 0-15.  (US Census Bureau). Since we do not yet have vaccine safety/efficacy information for the youngest members of our population (those ages 0-15), we can expect they will be among the last to get vaccinated.  Note: clinical trials are underway to assess vaccine safety/efficacy among children.  
2. This means that ~266 million individuals are in the line ahead of children.
3. Of those ~266 million, ~202 million are in prioritized groups 1a-1c (see Table 1).
4. This means that ~202 million individuals are in line to receive the vaccine before we get to the remaining ~64 million healthy, non-essential workers ages 16-64.
5. President Biden has a goal of 100 million vaccines within the first 100 days of his administration.  Note: this is 100 million doses, not full vaccinations.  According to Bloomberg Vaccine Tracker, the US has already administered 22.4 million shots, of which 17.1 million were administered before President Biden took office.  If President Biden’s goal is achieved, we can expect to have administered 117 million doses by April 30th.  
6. This is the equivalent of 58.5 million individuals fully vaccinated by April 30th. (note: many experts think we can achieve higher rates of vaccination as systems improve and production ramps up) 
7. If the pace continued at 1 million doses/day, we would expect to have:
   • 108.5 million individuals fully vaccinated by August 8 (1/3 of our whole population).  (200 days)
   • 158.5 million individuals fully vaccinated by November 16. (300 days)
   • 208.5 million individuals fully vaccinated by February 24, 2022 (78% of our adult population). (400 days)
8. But that goal is too limited since distribution challenges are being addressed, production is ramping up, and additional vaccines are in the pipeline for FDA review/authorization.  So let’s say that we double the pace after the first 100 days (2 million doses/day):
   • 158.5 million individuals fully vaccinated by August 8 (nearly 1/2 of our whole population; 60% of our entire adult population).  
   • 212.8 million by October 1, 2021 (80% of all adults would be fully vaccinated, which is perhaps close to the upper limit of adult vaccinations given issues of acceptance and conditions precluding vaccination like a history of severe allergic reaction)
   • 258.5 million individuals fully vaccinated by November 16.

Table 1. Prioritized Vaccine Group Population Size (millions) (from CDC)