| Number |
CREPEDP-156 |
| Publication Date |
May 2024 |
| Title |
"Optimal Vaccine Allocation Strategy: Theory and Application
to the Early Stage of COVID-19 in Japan"
|
| Author |
Toshikazu Kuniya, Taisuke Nakata, and Daisuke Fujii
|
| Abstract |
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.
|
| Keywords |
COVID-19, Vaccination, SIR Model, Age Structure, Optimal allocation
|
| Other information |
Paper in English (30 pages) |