Simulating the impact of different vaccination policies on the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City

  1. Wan Yang
  2. Sasikiran Kandula
  3. Jeffrey Shaman

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Abstract

To analyze potential COVID-19 epidemic outcomes in New York City under different SARS-CoV-2 virus circulation scenarios and vaccine rollout policies from early Jan 2021 to end of June 2021.

Key findings

In anticipation of the potential arrival and dominance of the more infectious SARS-CoV-2 variant:

  • Mass-vaccination would be critical to mitigating epidemic severity (26-52% reduction in infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, compared to no vaccination, provided the new UK variant supplants currently circulating variants).

  • Prioritizing key risk groups for earlier vaccination would lead to greater reductions in hospitalizations and deaths than infections. Thus, in general this would be a good strategy.

  • Current vaccination prioritization policy is suboptimal. To avert more hospitalizations and deaths, mass-vaccination of all individuals 65 years or older should be done as soon as possible. For groups listed in the same phase, 65+ year-olds should be given first priority ahead of others.

  • Available vaccine doses should be given to the next priority groups as soon as possible without awaiting hesitant up-stream groups.

  • While efficacy of vaccination off-protocol is unknown, provided immune response following a first vaccine dose persists, delaying the 2 nd vaccine dose by ∼1 month (i.e. administer the two doses 8 weeks apart) can substantially reduce infections, hospitalizations, and deaths compared to the 3-week apart regimen. Across all scenarios tested here, delaying the 2 nd vaccine dose leads to the largest reduction in severe epidemic outcomes (e.g. hospitalizations and deaths). Therefore, to protect as many people as possible, this strategy should be considered if rapid increases in infections, hospitalization or deaths and/or shortages in vaccines were to occur.

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      SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.21.21250228: (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: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

      Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

      Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

      Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

      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.
      • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
      • No protocol registration statement was detected.

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    2. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.21.21250228 on medRxiv