Vaccine rollout has been complicated by a range of factors, including delays in distribution and confusion over regulatory requirements. The CDC is now seeking to get more vaccines in the hands of the people who need them most. Officials have enlisted local pharmacies and supermarket chains to administer the vaccine to frontline workers, older adults, and others at high risk of infection or death from the disease.
Getting the vaccine to people who need it most is key, and WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts (SAGE) has provided guidance on which populations should be prioritized for vaccination first. But that’s easier said than done, as the population composition varies from state to state, as do the availability of vaccination sites and those who can deliver them.
The SAGE recommendations call for each country to develop a National Deployment and Vaccination Plan, but that can be hard to do given the complexity of the problem. And despite the best efforts of public health agencies, governments, and industry, there’s no guarantee that the global supply will be sufficient to cover every need, especially in lower income economies.
To help ensure that as many people as possible are vaccinated, we developed a model to evaluate different deployment strategies. Using the SAGE data, we found that prioritizing by mortality or by interactions is better than no prioritization at high vaccination rates and low lpa values, but is worse at intermediate rates. This suggests that a dynamic approach to prioritisation, where groups are moved between the different categories as the probability of death diminishes, might be a more effective strategy.