Serbia has adopted an approval mechanism for vaccinations, giving citizens the option to choose which vaccine they want to get and in which location they want to get vaccinated.
This makes Serbia the only country in the world where citizens can choose the vaccine type, between shots from Pfizer-BioNTech, China’s Sinopharm or Russia’s Sputnik.
This is from Sara Mageit, “Serbia reaches one million vaccines with help of AI framework,” Healthcare IT News, February 23, 2021.
There are 6.9 million people in Serbia, of whom over one million have received their first dose of vaccine. That’s 14.5 percent of Serbia’s population.
Let’s compare that with the United States.
64 million doses have been distributed in the United States. 64 million is 19.4 percent of the U.S. population, which makes the U.S. look better than Serbia. But that would be if everyone who got a shot here got just one shot. Such a policy would be quite sensible. But it’s not the one that U.S. governments have chosen. 13.3 percent of the U.S. population have received at least one dose. 13.3 percent of 330 million is 43.9 million people.
So 20.1 million people in the United States have received 2 doses and 23.8 million have received 1 dose.
Since 2 doses isn’t much better than 1, a reasonable comparison would be between our 13.3 percent and Serbia’s 14.5 percent. In other words, almost a dead heat (because getting 2 doses is slightly better than 1 dose.)
Interestingly, 14 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia have populations in which the percent having received at least one vaccination exceeds 15 percent. 3 states (Colorado, Iowa, and Wisconsin) have exceeded 14% but not 15%.
READER COMMENTS
Richard A.
Feb 23 2021 at 7:30pm
Here is comparison of the various vaccines.
David Henderson
Feb 24 2021 at 12:03pm
Thanks.
Fred
Feb 24 2021 at 12:00pm
The options in Serbia are the Pfizer-BioNTec, the Chinese one, or the Russian one? I may be blinded by first world chauvinism because this seems like on easy choice to me.
Seppo
Feb 25 2021 at 5:47pm
Is it really so obvious choice if the next available time for biontech is in 4 months and sinovac or sputnik can be had this week?
Comments are closed.