Here’s how long it will take to vaccinate everyone in California against COVID-19
It will take nearly the rest of the year to vaccinate half of California’s residents against COVID-19 at the current pace of inoculation.
There are about 40 million Californians. Current vaccines require two doses. From January 14 through January 24, the state used, on average, about 122,000 doses per day.
At that pace, about 20 million Californians would be fully inoculated against the disease around Thanksgiving. Three-quarters of the state would be inoculated around Memorial Day 2022.
If the state increases the pace of its vaccinations by 50 percent, half of its residents could be vaccinated by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccinations doubles, half of the state could be vaccinated by the Fourth of July. If the pace triples, half of the state could be vaccinated by Cinco De Mayo.
These simple projections come with caveats: The vaccination effort is still fledgling and restricted to certain populations. It’s possible that the current pace of vaccinations doesn’t tell us much about the pace in a month or two. The pace over the last four days was significantly higher than the days before — about 165,000 vaccinations reported per day.
New vaccines from Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca — which are pending FDA approval — could increase supply and the pace of vaccination. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine only requires a single dose and could be approved by the FDA sometime next month, though production of the vaccine has lagged.
Experts say about 80% of the population, or about 32 million Californians, must have resistance to COVID-19 to achieve herd immunity. That resistance can be obtained either through vaccination or prior infection. As of Saturday, the state had reported about 3.2 million infections, though that is almost certainly an undercount, since many infections are asymptomatic.
This story was originally published January 25, 2021 at 6:29 AM with the headline "Here’s how long it will take to vaccinate everyone in California against COVID-19."