{"title":"Optimal vaccine allocation strategy: Theory and application to the early stage of COVID-19 in Japan.","authors":"Toshikazu Kuniya, Taisuke Nakata, Daisuke Fujii","doi":"10.3934/mbe.2024277","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>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.</p>","PeriodicalId":49870,"journal":{"name":"Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3934/mbe.2024277","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"Mathematics","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
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.
期刊介绍:
Mathematical Biosciences and Engineering (MBE) is an interdisciplinary Open Access journal promoting cutting-edge research, technology transfer and knowledge translation about complex data and information processing.
MBE publishes Research articles (long and original research); Communications (short and novel research); Expository papers; Technology Transfer and Knowledge Translation reports (description of new technologies and products); Announcements and Industrial Progress and News (announcements and even advertisement, including major conferences).