Strategic COVID-19 vaccine distribution can simultaneously elevate social utility and equity

Lin Chen, Fengli Xu (), Zhenyu Han, Kun Tang, Pan Hui (), James Evans () and Yong Li ()
Additional contact information
Lin Chen: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Fengli Xu: University of Chicago
Zhenyu Han: Tsinghua University
Kun Tang: Tsinghua University
Pan Hui: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
James Evans: University of Chicago
Yong Li: Tsinghua University

Nature Human Behaviour, 2022, vol. 6, issue 11, 1503-1514

Abstract: Abstract Balancing social utility and equity in distributing limited vaccines is a critical policy concern for protecting against the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic and future health emergencies. What is the nature of the trade-off between maximizing collective welfare and minimizing disparities between more and less privileged communities? To evaluate vaccination strategies, we propose an epidemic model that explicitly accounts for both demographic and mobility differences among communities and their associations with heterogeneous COVID-19 risks, then calibrate it with large-scale data. Using this model, we find that social utility and equity can be simultaneously improved when vaccine access is prioritized for the most disadvantaged communities, which holds even when such communities manifest considerable vaccine reluctance. Nevertheless, equity among distinct demographic features may conflict; for example, low-income neighbourhoods might have fewer elder citizens. We design two behaviour-and-demography-aware indices, community risk and societal risk, which capture the risks communities face and those they impose on society from not being vaccinated, to inform the design of comprehensive vaccine distribution strategies. Our study provides a framework for uniting utility and equity-based considerations in vaccine distribution and sheds light on how to balance multiple ethical values in complex settings for epidemic control.

Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01429-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nathum:v:6:y:2022:i:11:d:10.1038_s41562-022-01429-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/nathumbehav/

DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01429-0

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Human Behaviour is currently edited by Stavroula Kousta

More articles in Nature Human Behaviour from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().