Denmark leads the way in Covid-19 inoculations in the European Union, having already given 2% of its population the shot.
This far outstrips other EU countries: the closest runners-up are Italy on 1.3 percent, Spain on 1.24 percent, and Slovenia on 1.2 percent.
At one point last week, Denmark’s rate of vaccination made it look like it could even catch up with the UK, despite the latter’s three-week head start.
Health authorities expect all priority groups — health-care workers and the elderly — to be vaccinated by April, and to offer shots to the rest of the population soon thereafter.
Estonia and Lithuania have also vaccinated more than one percent of the population. With 0.66 percent, the Czech Republic ranks 18th out of 27 EU countries.
The data is pulled together from official government sources and media reports. There is no central collection of vaccine figures and not all countries publish figures at this early stage.
There is also the possibility of some inaccuracies in the data because some countries may report a vaccination as one jab, while others may count it as the two required to be inoculated against COVID-19.
Further afield, Israel leads the world in its vaccine effort. It has already given at least one jab to an astonishing 22 per cent of its population, by creating a frozen distribution system with pharmaceutical company Teva, rolling out mobile vaccine units to villages, and mass vaccination centres in cities.
It also paid several times the EU’s price for the shots and agreed to share valuable vaccination data with Pfizer, making Israel something of a grand experiment.
Vaccination in the Czech Republic is “voluntary and free” and it is planned for over 5.5 million people, or 60-70% of the total Czech population of 10.7 million (according to June 2020 data from the Czech Statistical Office).
