Optimal vaccine allocation strategy: Theory and application to the early stage of COVID-19 in Japan

Autor: Toshikazu Kuniya, Taisuke Nakata, Daisuke Fujii
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2024
Předmět:
Zdroj: Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering, Vol 21, Iss 6, Pp 6359-6371 (2024)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 1551-0018
87163047
DOI: 10.3934/mbe.2024277?viewType=HTML
Popis: In this paper, we construct an age-structured epidemic model to analyze the optimal vaccine allocation strategy in an epidemic. We focus on two topics: the first one is the optimal vaccination interval between the first and second doses, and the second one is the optimal vaccine allocation ratio between young and elderly people. On the first topic, we show that the optimal interval tends to become longer as the relative efficacy of the first dose to the second dose (RE) increases. On the second topic, we show that the heterogeneity in the age-dependent susceptibility (HS) affects the optimal allocation ratio between young and elderly people, whereas the heterogeneity in the contact frequency among different age groups (HC) tends to affect the effectiveness of the vaccination campaign. A counterfactual simulation suggests that the epidemic wave in the summer of 2021 in Japan could have been greatly mitigated if the optimal vaccine allocation strategy had been taken.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals