Efficacy versus abundancy: Comparing vaccination schemes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new model comparing vaccination strategies, showing that faster deployment of lower efficacy vaccines can reduce deaths more effectively than slower deployment of higher efficacy vaccines, especially when started earlier.

Contribution

A novel compartmental model that evaluates the impact of vaccine efficacy, deployment rate, and timing on epidemic outcomes.

Findings

Faster deployment of low efficacy vaccines reduces deaths more than slower deployment of high efficacy vaccines.

Earlier introduction of low efficacy vaccines lowers death toll compared to delayed high efficacy vaccines.

High efficacy vaccines achieve better herd immunity and lower infection rates.

Abstract

We introduce a novel compartmental model accounting for the effects of vaccine efficacy, deployment rates and timing of initiation of deployment. We simulate different scenarios and initial conditions, and we find that higher abundancy and rate of deployment of low efficacy vaccines lowers the cumulative number of deaths in comparison to slower deployment of high efficacy vaccines. We also forecast that, at the same daily deployment rate, the earlier introduction of vaccination schemes with lower efficacy would also lower the number of deaths with respect to a delayed introduction of high efficacy vaccines, which can however, still achieve lower numbers of infections and better herd immunity.