Evaluating the Geographical Accessibility and Equity of COVID-19 Vaccination Sites in England

We assess the geographical accessibility of COVID-19 vaccination sites—including mass vaccination centers and community-level provision—in England utilizing open data from NHS England and detailed routing data from HERE Technologies. We aim to uncover inequity in vaccination site accessibility, highlighting small-area inequality hidden by coverage figures released by the NHS. Vaccination site accessibility measures are constructed at a neighborhood level using indicators of journey time by private and public transport. We identify inequity in vaccination-site accessibility at the neighborhood level, driven by region of residence, mode of transport (specifically availability of private transport), rural-urban geography and the availability of GP-led services. We find little evidence that accessibility to COVID-19 vaccination sites is related to underlying area-based deprivation. We highlight the importance of GP-led provision in maintaining access to vaccination services at a local level and reflect on this in the context of phase 3 of the COVID-19 vaccination programme (booster jabs) and other mass vaccination programmes.

Total curvature and area of curves with cusps and of surface maps

A curvature-area inequality for planar curves with cusps is derived. Using this inequality, the total (Lipschitz-Killing) curvature of a map with stable singularities of a closed surface into the plane is shown to be bounded below by the area of the map divided by the square of the radius of the smallest ball containing the image of the map. This latter result fills the gap in Santaló's proof of a similar estimate for surface maps into $\mathbf{R}^n$, $n>2$.