The rollout of a Covid-19 vaccine in Ireland is constantly evolving, with the Government issuing updates to its vaccine priority list and new vaccines coming on stream.
With officials hesitant to provide a definite timeline, an online calculator based on the State’s priority list and vaccination rate can help indicate when members of the population can expect their jab.
The vaccine queue calculator, developed by Southampton-based physicist Steven Wooding in partnership with Maciej Kowalski, a mathematician based in Poland, has been updated to take account of the latest changes to Ireland’s priority list.
The vaccine calculator is based on Ireland’s vaccination rate rather than vaccine deliveries, and has been updated from an earlier rate of 42,000 vaccinations a week to a current 81,000.
Mr Wooding confirmed the answers produced by the calculator are “cautious” and on the conservative side, as the calculator does not currently factor in the State’s vaccine rollout ramping up later in the year as vaccine deliveries likely increase.
The calculator provides its answer based on the Government’s priority list of vaccination cohorts, while taking account of a person’s age, living arrangements, occupation and medical conditions.
The tool estimates how many people are ahead of a person in Ireland’s vaccination queue of almost five million people, and provides an estimated date range within which they can expect a first and second dose.
The calculation is also automatically based on a vaccine uptake rate of 74 per cent, which can be adjusted in the “Rollout of vaccines” section of the calculator.
Mr Wooding said he first created a similar calculator for the UK in December, before expanding out to Canada and Ireland after receiving a positive response.
“From my own experience, when I started the UK calculator, my mum had a try and it got hers right, her dates right,” he said.
“We’re getting user feedback, I mean some people are very happy, and saying ‘yeah, it got it right’.”
The vaccine calculator is not linked to the HSE or any official agency related to Ireland’s vaccine rollout.
