Effective vaccine allocation strategies, balancing economy with infection control against COVID-19 in Japan

  1. Satoshi Sunohara
  2. Toshiaki Asakura
  3. Takashi Kimura
  4. Shun Ozawa
  5. Satoshi Oshima
  6. Daigo Yamauchi
  7. Akiko Tamakoshi

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Abstract

Due to COVID-19, many countries including Japan have implemented a suspension of economic activities for infection control. It has contributed to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 but caused severe economic losses. Today, several promising vaccines have been developed and are already being distributed in some countries. Therefore, we evaluated various vaccine and intensive countermeasure strategies with constraint of economic loss using SEIR model to obtain knowledge of how to balance economy with infection control in Japan. Our main results were that the vaccination strategy that prioritized younger generation was better in terms of deaths when a linear relationship between lockdown intensity and acceptable economic loss was assumed. On the other hand, when a non-linearity relationship was introduced, implying that the strong lockdown with small economic loss was possible, the old first strategies were best in the settings of small basic reproduction number. These results indicated a high potential of remote work when prioritizing vaccination for the old generation. When focusing on only the old first strategies as the Japanese government has decided to do, the strategy vaccinating the young next to the old was superior to the others when a non-linear relationship was assumed due to sufficient reduction of contact with small economic loss.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0257107
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.18.21255682: (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

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Optimization was done with differential evolution implemented in a python package, scipy version 1.5.3 [19,20].
    python
    suggested: (IPython, RRID:SCR_001658)
    scipy
    suggested: (SciPy, RRID:SCR_008058)

    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are several limitations to our study. First, our model assumed lockdown intensity could be precisely controlled by policy makers but in practice the actual extent of the contact reduction may not be obvious until a lockdown is in practice. Second, although the results of this study relied highly on parameters, especially contact rates, the contact rates referred to in the present study were based on data from [25], which did not take into account behavioral changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. Third, our analysis excluded children aged from 0 to 15 years old. Several studies suggested children were less likely to contribute to epidemics [23,38–40], the number of children cases has been increasing due to a new variant of SARS-CoV-2. Finally, our model of economic loss considered only the impact of direct behavioral restraint due to the lockdown, and did not take into account the value that infectious disease victims were expected to produce in the future, which had been taken into account in several previous studies about economic losses by COVID-19 pandemic [18,41].

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.18.21255682 on medRxiv