Simple criteria for finding (nearly) optimal vaccination strategies.
Strategies for best controlling the spread of the diseases with limited vaccine available are explored. I use influenza as a representative disease in point. The model describes the dynamics of influenza spread among multiple groups that have different risks and activity levels. I define a core group consisting of individuals with occupations that brings them in contact with many other people in a day. These occupations may include service industries, teachers, health care, and government workers, to name a few. High-risk individuals are those as typically designated for: children under 5 and adults over 50, people with weakened immune systems as well as emergency and health care personnel. Under certain conditions, shifting vaccination resources away from the high-risk group to the high-activity group will result in improved herd immunity in both the high-risk group and the population as whole. This results in more high-risk people protected even though less of them are being vaccinated, with the obvious implications that current vaccination policies may be far less then optimal. I show that the criteria for the optimal strategy can be derived from simple expressions gleaned from the expression for the basic reproductive number.
Tennenbaum
Stephen
S
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA. set1@math.asu.edu
D004196:Disease Outbreaks / Q000517:prevention & control; D006801:Humans; D032521:Immunity, Herd; D017589:Immunization Programs; D007252:Influenza Vaccines / Q000008:administration & dosage*; D007251:Influenza, Human / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000635:transmission; D008954:Models, Biological; D009784:Occupational Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000276:immunology / Q000517:prevention & control; D018570:Risk Assessment; D014611:Vaccination / Q000379:methods*
D007252:Influenza Vaccines