Waiting for the Perfect Vaccine

Gergely Röst (), Zhen Wang and Seyed M. Moghadas ()
Additional contact information
Gergely Röst: University of Szeged, National Laboratory for Health Security, Bolyai Institute
Zhen Wang: York University, Agent-Based-Modelling Laboratory
Seyed M. Moghadas: York University, Agent-Based-Modelling Laboratory

A chapter in Trends in Biomathematics: Exploring Epidemics, Eco-Epidemiological Systems, and Optimal Control Strategies, 2024, pp 217-232 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Vaccination has proven to be the most effective public health measure in the fight against various infectious diseases. For emerging or re-emerging diseases, a highly efficacious vaccine may not be available at the start of an outbreak. Timelines for availability of a safe and effective vaccine may significantly affect disease dynamics, its burden, and the healthcare resource utilization. Mitigating this impact may then rely on low-efficacy vaccines that may be rapidly produced and distributed to at-risk populations at the early stages of an outbreak. With the expectation for arrival of a more effective vaccine at a later stage of the outbreak, the optimal vaccination coverage with the existing, low-efficacy vaccines is elusive. While flattening the outbreak if a significant proportion of the susceptible population is vaccinated with a low-efficacy vaccine, the overall infections may not be minimized if a small proportion of the population left unvaccinated when a highly efficacious vaccine becomes available. The optimal coverage for early vaccination could thus depend on several parameters including the efficacy of the currently available vaccines, arrival timing of a more effective vaccine and its efficacy, and the transmissibility of the disease. Here, we develop a deterministic system of differential equations to investigate the optimal vaccination coverage with a low-efficacy vaccine within the aforementioned parameter space. Despite simplifying assumptions, we illustrate that minimizing the overall infections does not necessarily correspond to the highest coverage of early vaccination. However, a high vaccination coverage, even with a low-efficacy vaccine, may still contribute to alleviating severe disease outcomes and reducing healthcare resource utilization.

Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-59072-6_10

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031590726

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-59072-6_10

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().