title: Optimal vaccination strategies for a community of households.
abstract: The effectiveness of a vaccination program depends on how the vaccinations are spread over the households of the community. Here we formulate the optimal allocation of vaccinations as a linear programming problem, when the objective is to prevent epidemics with the minimum vaccination coverage. A vaccine efficacy of less than 100%, as is usual in practice, is allowed for. Optimal vaccine allocations attempt to leave the same number of susceptibles in every household if the disease has a very high transmission rate within households. This means that proportionately more individuals need to be vaccinated in larger households if the vaccine efficacy is < 100%. The linear programming formulation can accommodate heterogeneity among individuals of the proportionate mixing form and can also minimize the initial reproduction number for a given achievable vaccination coverage.
authors.affiliation: School of Statistical Science, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, Australia.
authors.forename: N G
authors.initials: NG
authors.lastname: Becker
authors.forename: D N
authors.initials: DN
authors.lastname: Starczak
mesh_terms: D003140:Communicable Disease Control / Q000379:methods*; D003141:Communicable Diseases / Q000635:transmission; D018672:Community Health Planning / Q000379:methods; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D006801:Humans; D017589:Immunization Programs; D008433:Mathematics; D015233:Models, Statistical; D014611:Vaccination