Age-targeted dose allocation can halve COVID-19 vaccine requirements
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Abstract
In anticipation of COVID-19 vaccine deployment, we use an age-structured mathematical model to investigate the benefits of optimizing age-specific dose allocation to suppress the transmission, morbidity and mortality of SARS-CoV-2 and the associated disease, COVID-19. To minimize transmission, we find that the highest priority individuals across 179 countries are typically those between 30 and 59 years of age because of their high contact rates and higher risk of infection and disease. Conversely, morbidity and mortality are initially most effectively reduced by targeting 60+ year olds who are more likely to experience severe disease. However, when population-level coverage is sufficient — such that herd immunity can be achieved through targeted dose allocation — prioritizing middle-aged individuals becomes the most effective strategy to minimize hospitalizations and deaths. For each metric considered, we show that optimizing the allocation of vaccine doses can more than double their effectiveness.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.08.20208108: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Nevertheless, several limitations and possible extensions to the existing analysis remain. To begin, no vaccine provides perfect protection — and certainly not across all age groups. The results presented herein assume a vaccine efficacy of 90% that is sustained across all age groups at baseline; however, results assuming reduced efficacy (45%) in individuals over 60 years of age, and an alternative efficacy of 70% are presented in the …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.08.20208108: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.Table 2: Resources
No key resources detected.
Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your code and data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:Nevertheless, several limitations and possible extensions to the existing analysis remain. To begin, no vaccine provides perfect protection — and certainly not across all age groups. The results presented herein assume a vaccine efficacy of 90% that is sustained across all age groups at baseline; however, results assuming reduced efficacy (45%) in individuals over 60 years of age, and an alternative efficacy of 70% are presented in the Supplementary Materials. We found that reduced efficacy in individuals over 60 years of age had a negligible impact on the predicted minimum vaccination coverage targets and the level of priority assigned to particular age groups for most countries — China being a notable exception. Conversely, varying the baseline vaccine efficacy has a substantial impact on each of these outcomes: the minimum coverage required to achieve herd immunity increases substantially when the vaccine is 70% effective (with several countries unable to achieve herd immunity through vaccination alone — even with 100% coverage); similarly, the switch from elderly to middle-aged individuals as the highest priority age groups to minimize hospitalizations and mortality does not occur until higher values of population-level coverage are reached. Therefore, given that individual countries will have ranging access to an extensive suite of potential vaccines, it is important that the highly diverse efficacies of different candidates are considered when selecting an optimal strat...
Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We found bar graphs of continuous data. We recommend replacing bar graphs with more informative graphics, as many different datasets can lead to the same bar graph. The actual data may suggest different conclusions from the summary statistics. For more information, please see Weissgerber et al (2015).
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No funding statement was detected.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
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