COVID-19 vaccination policies under uncertain transmission characteristics using stochastic programming

PLoS One. 2022 Jul 22;17(7):e0270524. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0270524. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

We develop a new stochastic programming methodology for determining optimal vaccination policies for a multi-community heterogeneous population. An optimal policy provides the minimum number of vaccinations required to drive post-vaccination reproduction number to below one at a desired reliability level. To generate a vaccination policy, the new method considers the uncertainty in COVID-19 related parameters such as efficacy of vaccines, age-related variation in susceptibility and infectivity to SARS-CoV-2, distribution of household composition in a community, and variation in human interactions. We report on a computational study of the new methodology on a set of neighboring U.S. counties to generate vaccination policies based on vaccine availability. The results show that to control outbreaks at least a certain percentage of the population should be vaccinated in each community based on pre-determined reliability levels. The study also reveals the vaccine sharing capability of the proposed approach among counties under limited vaccine availability. This work contributes a decision-making tool to aid public health agencies worldwide in the allocation of limited vaccines under uncertainty towards controlling epidemics through vaccinations.

MeSH terms

  • COVID-19 Vaccines
  • COVID-19* / epidemiology
  • COVID-19* / prevention & control
  • Humans
  • Policy
  • Reproducibility of Results
  • SARS-CoV-2
  • Uncertainty
  • Vaccination
  • Vaccines*

Substances

  • COVID-19 Vaccines
  • Vaccines

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.