Azerbaijan reports over 100% of adult population fully vaccinated, opposition questions the statistics

The official statistics of those vaccinated against coronavirus in Azerbaijan says that almost the entire adult population of the country has been vaccinated with both doses of the vaccine. But according to President Ilham Aliyev, only 60% of those over 18 are fully vaccinated. One of the opposition leaders drew attention to the strong discrepancy in the data.

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Error for over 2 million people

“We have a new world record: yesterday the number of vaccinated people in Azerbaijan exceeded 100%. There is no such indicator anywhere else in the world.

According to the Central Election Commission, 5,257,872 citizens over 18 years old live in the country and according to the data of the headquarters as of yesterday, 5,258,418 people were vaccinated with at least one dose. That is, an extra 546 people!

Since September, vaccinations have been carried out with the consent of both parents for children under the age of 18. But according to the Ministry of Health, two weeks ago their number was 357 people. It can be assumed that the “extra” 546 people are the very same children.

Thus, there is not a single person left in Azerbaijan who has not been vaccinated. If this is not true, then there is an error in the voter lists of more than 2 million people”, Ilgar Mammadov, leader of the opposition Republican Alternative party, wrote on his Facebook page on November 1.

Operations headquarters corrected the “error”

On Wednesday, November 3, the operational headquarters for the fight against coronavirus under the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan “corrected” the error. In the official summary of vaccinated there was a line of the number of people vaccinated with the third – “booster” dose of the vaccine.

As a result, about 320,000 people “migrated” from those vaccinated with the first dose of the vaccine to those vaccinated with the “booster” dose.

In fact, there is a simple explanation for this. The automatic vaccination queue registration system does not recognize the third dose, and regards it as the first. Either this is a programming error, or it was conceived from the very beginning. This illogical behavior of the system was also experienced by one of the JAMnews employees. He checked in for the third dose, but the system recorded it as the first.

“Even if we calculate those who were vaccinated with the third dose, it turns out that today 95% (!!!) of the adult population is vaccinated. Again, this is the world record.

Everyone knows that this is wrong, but then the question stands: if 95% of the population is vaccinated, what is the tool of total control called QR code doing in Azerbaijan?”, Ilgar Mammadov wrote on November 3.

President clarifies the data

Speaking on Thursday, November 4, at the forum named after Nizami Ganjavi, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev said that today 60% of the adult population in the country are vaccinated with both doses.

If 4.4 million people vaccinated with both doses of the vaccine make up 60% of the population over 18 years old, it becomes clear in a simple mathematical way: 7.3 million people over 18 years old live in Azerbaijan.

As Ilgar Mammadov noted in his message, this is exactly 2 million more than the number of voters. The exact number of voters in the country was last announced by the Central Election Commission ahead of the parliamentary elections in February 2020.

According to the Constitution of Azerbaijan, all citizens, without exception, who have turned 18 years old on voting day, have the right to vote.

So far, the CEC has not commented on these statistical incidents in any way.