Optimal vaccine roll-out strategies including social distancing for pandemics

Konstantinos Spiliotis; Constantinos Chr Koutsoumaris; Andreas I Reppas; Lito A Papaxenopoulou; Jens Starke; Haralampos Hatzikirou

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2022.104575

Optimal vaccine roll-out strategies including social distancing for pandemics

iScience. 2022 Jul 15;25(7):104575. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2022.104575. Epub 2022 Jun 15.

Authors

Konstantinos Spiliotis¹, Constantinos Chr Koutsoumaris², Andreas I Reppas³, Lito A Papaxenopoulou⁴, Jens Starke¹, Haralampos Hatzikirou^{5

6}

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Mathematics, University of Rostock, 18057 Rostock, Germany.
² Department of Research, Development and Innovation Statistics, National Documentation Centre, 48 Vas. Konstantinou St, Athens 11635, Greece.
³ Universität Berlin and Humboldt- Universität zu Berlin, Charitéplatz 1, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
⁴ Department of Systems Immunology and Braunschweig Integrated Centre of Systems Biology, Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research, Rebenring 56, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany.
⁵ Centre for Information Services and High Performance Computing, Technische Universität Dresden, Nöthnitzer Straße 46, 01062 Dresden, Germany.
⁶ Mathematics Department, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 127788, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.

Abstract

Non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs), principally social distancing, in combination with effective vaccines, aspire to develop a protective immunity shield against pandemics and particularly against the COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, an agent-based network model with small-world topology is employed to find optimal policies against pandemics, including social distancing and vaccination strategies. The agents' states are characterized by a variation of the SEIR model (susceptible, exposed, infected, recovered). To explore optimal policies, an equation-free method is proposed to solve the inverse problem of calibrating an agent's infection rate with respect to the vaccination efficacy. The results show that prioritizing the first vaccine dose in combination with mild social restrictions, is sufficient to control the pandemic, with respect to the number of deaths. Moreover, for the same mild number of social contacts, we find an optimal vaccination ratio of 0.85 between older people of ages $> 65$ compared to younger ones.

Keywords: Health sciences; Public health; Virology.