Online tool calculates when you can expect to get your Covid-19 vaccine
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An online tool can now calculate when Irish people will be able to get the vaccine for Covid-19.
It comes as Ireland’s current vaccine roll-out plan looks set to see 700,000 people vaccinated across the country by the end of March.
In Europe, two vaccines have already been approved for use, the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, while the Astrazeneca vaccine is on course to be approved by the end of the month.
Steven Wooding, a physicist from Southampton, alongside Maciej Kowalski, a PhD student in Mathematics at the Polish Academy of Sciences, have created a tool to help predict when people from Ireland will be able to avail of these vaccines.
Together, they created the ‘Vaccine Queue Calculator’ for the Omni Calculator Project, basing it on the Provisional Vaccine Allocation Groups released by the Department of Health and the likely rate of vaccination.
The tool is not associated with the Department of Health and only uses data previously published to approximate when people can hope to be vaccinated.
According to Mr Wooding, the tool takes into account your age, profession, health condition, and other risk factors.
The calculator then shows you the minimum and the maximum number of people in front of you and a range of dates you might have to wait till you get your shot.
It is available here at Omni calculator
“After using the calculator, my Irish friend told me there are at least 1,581,026 people who will get the Covid-19 vaccine before her, meaning she can expect her first dose after October 2, 2021,” explained Mr Wooding.
The calculator has similar prototypes which have been implemented in the UK, Canada and Poland, and are all available online via the Omni Calculator website.
To use the calculator, you answer a number of questions including your age, whether you live or work in a long-term care facility, whether you are pregnant or planning to be in the next few months, are you a healthcare worker and more.
Taking to Twitter yesterday, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly gave an update of how Ireland's vaccination plan was moving.
“By the end of March, we aim to have vaccinated 700,000 people, including nursing home residents and staff, as well as frontline healthcare workers and people aged 70+,” he said.
“We are set to receive substantially more vaccines per month from April on, which will allow us to ramp up significantly and protect more people from Covid-19. We are receiving a pro-rata allocation - like all EU countries - based on our population size,” he added.