Vaccine queue calculator shows when one can get shots vs. COVID-19

Two Filipinos on the team of a British physicist who developed a vaccine queue calculator in the United Kingdom has come up with a similar tool for the Philippines.

"Since January we’ve been researching. We found the data, the population group, the national priority plan but since the national priority plan kept changing then we also have to wait until we could roll out the calculator," said Reina Sagnip of the Omni Calculator project.

"When we finally were able vaccinate on March first, we’re we finally able to release the calculator," she added.

Sagnip and Engineer Kenneth Alambra were the only Filipinos in the Omni Calculator team put together by physicist Steve Wooding in the United Kingdom.

Wooding's pioneering work put together the UK's vaccination rate and national vaccination plan, something that Sagnip and Alambra did in the Philippine setting.

"We do update the calculator every day pero kapag hindi significant ‘yung changes sometimes we still wait for the DOH updated figures para mas tama yung figures na magagamit natin for the calculations," Alambra said.

The team said the calculator's findings are in no way official or representative of the government's vaccine rollout.

But according to its data on March 6, the Philippines needs to inoculate 2.8 million people a week to vaccinate 70% of its hundred-million population and achieve herd immunity against COVID-19 by the end of the year, a vaccine queue calculator indicated earlier this week.

If the Philippines would continue on the 32,940 weekly vaccination rate as of that date, the calculated showed that less than ten percent would get the necessary doses against the deadly coronavirus.

The calculator also showed that a 30-year-old who's not a frontline health worker and who doesn't have any comorbidity, is expected to get his or her first vaccine dose between June 12 and April 23, 2022.

The second dose may be expected between January 2, 2022 and May 14, 2022. --NB, GMA News