Australian Vaccine Tracker FAQs

These are some Frequently Asked Questions for the Australian Vaccine Tracker Twitter account. If you have any questions, please hit me up on Twitter at: @AusVaccine

Where does the data come from?

All the vaccination figures are sourced from CovidBaseAU and/or Covid Live. I am eternally grateful to Jack, Anthony, and many other people who have made this possible. This account truly stands on the shoulders of giants.

If you’re interested in a breakdown of stats by state, please visit the sites linked above.

Citizen Data, really?

This data is ultimately taken from federal and state figures, but as these are very inconsistent and unreliable a lot of effort goes in to making the data understandable. It would be great to have this data in a simple form from the various governments each day and hopefully some day we will.

Some of the challenges of interpreting this data are explained in this Twitter thread, very much worth a read.

It’s important to note that all of this data goes through some kind of interpretation as to it’s meaning when the data is sourced from the various governments and therefore these numbers should only ever be considered as estimates - they are not official figures.

If you would like more analysis of all the COVID19 stats, I highly recommend checking out the amazing work done by Juliette (@juliette_io at covid19data.com.au) and Mike (@Mike_Honey_).

What do the 1st, 2nd, & 3rd dose numbers mean?

The numbers are the total number of people who are in each category. A person can be in the category of having had one, two, three, or zero doses; or can be in the category of not eligible (children). When a person gets their second dose they move from one category to the next.

Example: Say there are 100 people in the population. 5 first doses have been administered, 50 second, and 10 third doses. The data would show 5 people in "partially" vaccinated category (1 dose), 50 people in "fully" vaccinated category (2 doses), 10 people “boosted” (3 doses), and 35 people unvaccinated (some ineligible).

What do the coloured squares mean?

Each square represents 1% of the total Australian population. The colours are as follows:

🟢 = Boosted

🟩 = Fully vaccinated

🟪 = Partially vaccinated

⬜️ = Not vaccinated

◻️ = Not eligible (children under 5, as of January 2022)

This was the position at the end of 2021:

🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟢🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟪🟪⬜️⬜️
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️
◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️◻️

🟢 9.9% 💉💉💉
🟩 67.7% 💉💉
🟪 2.7% 💉

Shout out to R.Obocop (@raaahbin) for suggesting the coloured emojis style of tweet, it’s a great idea 👍

Why use the total population?

The federal government states that "Everyone in Australia will be offered a COVID-19 vaccine." (from health.gov.au) so I am taking the total population as the ultimate target as that is what the government have said is the target.

The federal government has also published an FAQ which states the same and gives some indication as to targets they think would create herd immunity. See this web page for details.

This is also the measure that is generally used for reporting around the world. Not always, but usually. And finally, when/if we set targets of X% of people need to be vaccinated, that will include children too.

How many people in the total population? How many children?

I am using an estimate of 25,500,000. This is based on the latest ABS figures with an adjustment made to reflect a net outflow of migrants per announcements made in the federal budget of 2021. The ABS classifies children as 0-14 years and they accounted for 18.7% of the population as of 2019. That does not exactly line up with the vaccine definition of children/adult which is at 16 years old. So I have rounded children (under 16) up to say they are 20% of the population. The figures used in calculations therefore are 20,400,000 adults and 5,100,000 children.

When did the data in the tweets change?

Thew new calculation method has been in use since 27 June, 2021. Tweets from before this date look different and use a different method of calculation for adults only.