January 6, 2021 1.14 pm This story is over 38 months old

This is how long it will take for you to get the COVID vaccine

An online calculator estimates vaccine dates
Safeguarding nurse Richard Painter receiving his COVID-19 vaccine at Scunthorpe General Hospital. | Photo: NLaG
By Local Democracy Reporter

A new online calculator estimates how far in the queue for a COVID-19 vaccine you are, and when you can expect to be given your doses.

The Omni vaccine calculator gets you to answer a few questions, such as age, whether you are a health worker and if you have any underlying health conditions, before showing your place in the queue.

This system is based on the UK government’s nine-point priority list for who will have access to the vaccine first, with care home residents and carers at the top of the list.

The results show you a range of how many people are in front of you in the queue based on your answers.

Calculate how far you are in the vaccine queue here

An example of the vaccine queue estimates from Omni calculator.

With the Pfizer vaccine first being approved on December 2, 2020, and the first dose being administered on December 8, Omni calculator looks at when you might expect to get your vaccine.

Any vaccine queue results on the site are based on a guideline vaccination rate of 1,000,000 a week and an uptake of 70.6%, the guideline figure experts give to achieve herd immunity for flu.

It also measures how long you’ll have to wait for the second dose, with it being announced that you will need two jabs for coronavirus immunity.

If you tick yes as a care home resident or worker, it is estimated that your first vaccine dose will be given to you before January 10, and the second between March 31 and April 4.

Janet Judson, 84, a retired nurse, was the first in Lincolnshire to get the COVID vaccine from lead nurse Leanne Belton. | Photo: ULHT

If you answer no to all the questions, there is likely to be multiple millions of people ahead of you in the queue.

For instance, a 25-year-old with no underlying health conditions that isn’t a carer is expected to have between 26 and 37 million people in front of them.

This predicts that the first vaccine dose will be given to them between July 12 and September 26, with the second coming between October 4 and December 19.

With the new Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine being approved and administered already in Lincolnshire and the rest of the UK, it is hoped that more vaccinations will be able to take place.