Wait For It: Life Will Return To Normal In Seven Years, Vaccine Database Shows

It will take seven years for life to return to normal and for coronavirus to subside, a Bloomberg database tracking worldwide coronavirus vaccinations found.

Although countries like the U.S. and Israel have administered coronavirus at a rate that will ensure herd immunity by 2022, most countries have fallen behind that pace and will not catch up for seven years, according to Bloomberg. More than 119 million vaccines have been administered in 67 countries and the most recent rate of vaccination was 4.54 million doses per day, the vaccine database showed.

“You’ve got to be able to get — with the help of the developed world — the entire world vaccinated,” Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical officer, said during an NPR interview Thursday. “As we allow this infection to exist to any degree in any part of the world, it will always be a threat.”

“So we’ve got to approach this the way we approach smallpox, the way we approach polio, and the way we approach measles and other devastating global outbreaks,” he continued.

The U.S. has administered a total of 35.2 million vaccine doses since December, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At the current rate, roughly 75% of the population will have received a two-dose vaccine by 2022, which is enough for herd immunity, according to Fauci, Bloomberg reported.

Israel has the highest rate of vaccination and will reach 75% coverage in two months, according to Bloomberg. Most European countries will take 3 or 4 years to reach the 75% threshold while Canada and China are on pace to reach it in 6 years.

Bloomberg’s database, which is the largest of its kind tracking global coronavirus vaccinations, made the calculation based on a two-dose vaccination requirement. But, pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson filed for emergency use authorization from the Food and Drug Administration for its one-dose vaccine Thursday. Factoring one-dose vaccines would speed up Bloomberg’s forecast.