How you can keep a close eye on vaccinations in Indiana

Do you want to know all the facts and figures on the COVID-19 vaccines in Indiana? Are you a proud data geek? Do you like spending a half-hour staring at maps and bar charts, trying to tease out vital information?

If you answered yes to any of the above, you should check out the Indiana Department of Health’s vaccine dashboard, which went up last week and will be updated every Wednesday.

Vaccines are the big story of the moment in this pandemic, and interest is likely to grow as people try to figure out when they—or their parents or spouses or children—can get vaccinated.

So what will you see on the dashboard? There’s plenty to keep you busy.

First, you can see a running total of individuals vaccinated (75,842 between Dec. 14 and Dec. 29).

You can also see the number of people vaccinated in the past week alone (45,962 between Dec. 23 and Dec. 29).

Since COVID-19 vaccinations require two doses, roughly three weeks apart, you can also see that zero people have been fully vaccinated so far.

But that’s just for starters.

You can also see an Indiana map with breakout of vaccinations per county. Marion County, the state’s largest by population, also had the highest number of vaccinations, at 9,717.

Rounding out the top five were Hamilton County (6,836), Allen County (5,463) Lake County (4,341), and Vanderburgh County (3,529).

Some small counties have very few vaccinations so far, including Switzerland County (9), Crawford County (37), and Newton County (21).

Indiana health officials say all vaccinations so far are being reserved for front-line health providers, such as doctors, nurses, therapists and even hospital janitors. Also getting early vaccinations are staff and residents of long-term-care facilities, which includes more than 1,000 nursing homes.

Next up are prisons, jails, homeless shelters and other “congregant settings” where people are living close together.

The general public likely won’t get vaccinated until late January, at earliest.

But back to the dashboard.

There’s a breakdown by gender, which shows that women are getting the vaccine in far greater numbers than men (roughly a 2-to-1 ratio). That’s not really surprising if you think about who staffs all of the hospital floors and nursing home: lots of female doctors, nurses, aides and therapists.

There’s also a breakdown in age, showing that most of the people getting vaccinated so far are in the active working years (age groups from 20 to 59 getting the bulk of the vaccinations).

There are other features, including vaccination breakdowns by race and gender, and an explanation of who can get a vaccine first, and why.

But wait, there’s more! If you want to see how Indiana compares to other states, check out this national dashboard on vaccines posted by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. You can see how Indiana stacks up in the number of vaccines distributed and the number of doses administered.

That should keep you busy for a couple of hours.