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A man receives a dose of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccine Saturday without getting out of his vehicle in Indianapolis, Indiana. (AP/Yonhap News)

While more than a billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines have now been administered worldwide, countries that have prioritized vaccines, such as the UK and US, are still reporting more new cases of the infectious disease than countries that have emphasized disease control such as South Korea and Australia. That shows once more that the virus can’t be stopped by relaxing disease control measures and trusting entirely in inoculation.

After tabulating official figures provided by each country, the AFP said Saturday that a total of 1,002,930,000 COVID-19 shots had been received in 207 countries and regions around the world. More than half (58%) of those shots were reported in the populous countries of China, the US and India, the AFP said.

A visit to Our World in Data, an international statistical website, on Saturday showed that Israel had the world’s highest per capita vaccination rate. Israel has given 1.2 million doses per 1 million people, for a vaccination rate of 60%.

The United Arab Emirates had administered 1.03 million doses per 1 million people, vaccinating 51% of the population. Other countries with a high vaccination rate are Chile (36%), Bahrain, the UK (34%) and the US (33%).

But the data shows that a high vaccination rate doesn’t necessarily bring down the number of new COVID-19 cases.

The graph shows daily new confirmed COVID-19 cases per million people in South Korea and other countries with high vaccination rates. (Our World in Data screenshot)

Our World in Data said that South Korea had a daily average of 13.37 new cases per 1 million people in the week prior to Friday, while the daily average was 0.86 in Australia and 0.27 in New Zealand. The only heavily vaccinated country that came close to those figures was Israel (15.78).

The UAE, which has the world’s second-highest vaccination rate, reported a daily average of 196.13 new cases per 1 million people. The average caseload was also high in Bahrain (601.54), Chile (348.18), and the US (179.59). The situation was better in the UK, which has a daily average of 37.22 new cases.

The US continues to see around 200 new cases per 1 million people, although the daily caseload has declined since the end of February.

A similar trend can be seen in the UAE. Since mid-March, the daily number of COVID-19 cases has stubbornly remained around 200.

By Shin Gi-sub, senior staff writer

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