COVID-19 Global Vaccination Progress: An Analysis on its Impact in Society

As countries around the world continue to distribute COVID-19 shots and vaccinate their citizens, many regions and countries differ in the vaccination rates of their citizens with regions such as Africa significantly behind while more developed countries such as the United States, European nations, and China consistently distribute the vaccine.

In many cases, your country of origin and vaccination status determines your travel restrictions into another country. For example, to enter Canada from the United States, you must be fully vaccinated effective Nov. 30, 2021. To enter the United Kingdom as an American, you can enter without full vaccination but will be subject to a pre-departure COVID-19 test and a ten day quarantine if you aren’t.

Nowadays, vaccination status also affects day to day things. State employees in states such as California, Washington, and North Carolina are subject to vaccine mandates. Consequently, those who don’t comply will lose their jobs. For those visiting New York City, to enter restaurants, gyms, coffee shops, bars, and other common places, you must prove you’ve received at least one dose of the vaccine if you are older than 12 years old.

More locally, Syracuse University required the vaccine for everyone on campus except for those with medical and religious exemptions. Without a vaccination or exemption, SU did not welcome you to campus.

Evidently, the effect of the vaccine on travel, education, and living has impacted vaccination rates in some countries as many are incentivized to receive a dose because of the restrictions they face. While some countries and regions are seeing consistent increase in their fully vaccinated population, some areas and places aren’t vaccinating as frequently because of various factors and fall behind the rest of the world’s progress.

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For example, the majority of African countries have a fully vaccinated population of under 10% as of Nov. 14, 2021 while the world’s is just over 40%, according to data from Pharmaceutical Technology. In comparison, many western European countries, China, Canada, and the United States have their population at least 50% fully vaccinated. At least 40% of people are fully vaccinated in other places such as South America, the Middle East, and Australia. But Africa still remains significantly behind many other regions, mainly because of the lack of supplies.

“While insufficient COVID-19 vaccine supplies remains a top issue for African countries, other reported issues include the lack of funds, lack of trained professionals and hesitancy among the population to get the vaccine,” a news release said from the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. “In addition, many countries were not able to reach priority groups because they are not equipped with up-to-date registration systems that allow to locate and register these priority individuals.”

Resources such as technology and syringes are limited in these African countries and as a result, vaccination progress begins to stall. According to the World Health Organization, only five African countries of the continent’s 54 are projected to reach the year end goal of vaccinating 40% of its population as of Oct. 28, 2021.

“The main reason that this is happening is access and inability to purchase vaccines at the country level," said Dr. Brittany Kmush, assistant professor of public health at Syracuse University. "Once you have the vaccines, it takes time and infrastructure to get them into people’s arms.”

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Three African nations - Seychelles, Mauritius, and Morocco - have already achieved this end goal, and two other nations - Tunisia and Cabo Verde - will reach the mark at the current rate. Three of these countries are island nations and the other two - Tunisia and Morocco - are middle income. Other regions of the world are more developed and advanced technologically. Simply, Africa’s inaccessibility to sufficient resources and its inferiority developmentally contributes to its slow vaccination progress.

However, it’s not just insufficient resources contributing to the slow vaccination rates. Vaccination hesitancy has stalled not just Africa’s progress but countries worldwide, especially the United States. Many Americans have expressed various reasons for refusing to get vaccinated saying it was developed rather quickly, they don’t need to receive it because they aren’t an at-risk population, it’s a political issue, or they don’t trust it medically.

Kmush said it could divided into two groups of people: vaccine hesistant and anti-vaxxers. She acknowledged that the anti-vaxxers, who have objected many other vaccines, are headstrong and would be likely impossible to convince but the goal would be to convince those who are hesistant, a group more common during the COVID-19 pandemic, for whatever their thought process is. Then, vaccination rates would increase.

Regardless of thought process, hesitancy represents another factor that affects vaccination rates. Even though certain age groups are not approved to receive the vaccine yet in every country, parental belief will impact the number of people getting vaccinated since they are likely to be the ones determining if their child gets vaccinated. However, in comparison to Africa and more developed areas, a survey by Morning Consult found that wealthier nations, such as the U.S and Russia, have higher vaccine hesitancy.

“Over a quarter of United States residents included in the Morning Consult survey reported that they were either unwilling to get vaccinated or uncertain about the vaccine,” an article in the U.S. News and World Report said. “Russia, an upper-middle income country that has been at the forefront of vaccine research, reported the highest figures of vaccine hesitancy among its respondents, with 48% of Russia participants either unwilling to get vaccinated or uncertain about the vaccine."

Despite being leaders in the research and development of the vaccines, Russia only has a fully vaccinated population of just over 35% while the U.S’ is just under 60% as of Nov. 14, 2021.

In addition, vaccine mandates have contributed to the fully vaccinated rate in the United States, including President Joe Biden’s vaccination requirement for all federal employees and the 22 states that have mandates for certain employees as of Nov. 16, 2021. On the contrary, 12 states have prohibited mandates and 17 have not implemented any yet, which has led to significant political debate in the United States, another factor in vaccination rates.

"I think in general (mandates) are helpful," Kmush said. "They get a lot of those people who are kind of on the fence the push they need to get vaccinated."

But it isn’t just the U.S. that has mandated the vaccine in certain areas. Indonesia mandated that all adults be vaccinated, and has seen an increase of just over 10% in its fully vaccinated population since Oct. 4th, 2021 to Nov. 14, 2021. Costa Rica required all its state workers to be vaccinated and saw an approximate 13% increase in full vaccinations in the same time span. And for Singapore, it will stop covering the medical costs of unvaccinated coronavirus patients. Just under 85% of Singapore’s population is fully vaccinated.

Whether poor resources, hesitancy, incentives, or mandates, there’s evidently many factors that contribute to global vaccination data. As time progresses as well as vaccination rates, society will continue to see its effects on travel restrictions, education, and day to day life.