We developed a computational simulation model of the entire United States to assess what would happen if people get vaccines of varying levels of efficacy at different rates and times. As we reported in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine, in most cases, getting people vaccinated sooner with a lower efficacy vaccine prevented many more Covid-19 cases, hospitalizations and deaths compared to waiting even just a month for a higher efficacy vaccine.
Consider an example: Say the United States was able to get one million people a day fully vaccinated, with a vaccine with 90 percent efficacy (about what’s been happening so far) and continued until 60 percent of the population was fully vaccinated. At this rate, it would take about six and half months.
For comparison, consider a scenario where people are fully vaccinated at a faster rate of 1.5 million a day with a lower efficacy vaccine of around 70 percent until 60 percent of the population was fully vaccinated. At this faster rate, this would take about four months.
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