When will you get the coronavirus vaccine? New online calculator for NI shows ‘queue’ and gives estimated date

Steven Wooding, who created the new online tool, told the News Letter he wanted to give people “an idea of where they are” in the queue for the vaccine.

“Going back to when the vaccines came out, to great fanfare, we began to find out that it was going to take some time for this to roll out,” he said.

“We are doing very well but we know that it is still going to take time, so I wanted to give people an idea of where they are in the queue.

“We ask a series of simple questions, to find out which priority group they are in, and we can tell them approximately how many people are in front of them and we give them a date. It gives you a rough idea of where you are, and we are updating it with vaccination rates every day, which also gives you an idea of how well it is going.”

The data the calculator, uses is specific to Northern Ireland, he said.

“The priority lists are basically the same across the UK, so we then look at ONS (Office for National Statistics) data on age profile, how many people are in each age group, how many clinically extremely vulnerable people they are so we can get the number of people in each priority group.

“We also wanted to know how many people will accept the vaccine, and for that we looked at survey results.”

According to the calculator, which can be found at omnicalculator.com, an 18-year-old with no underlying health conditions in Northern Ireland could expect to be offered their first vaccine as early as May 16 or as late as August 16, while for a healthy 50-year-old the dates given were between April 24 and May 16.

The new calculator can be found at https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-northern-ireland