Optimal vaccine roll-out strategies with respect to social distancing measures for SARS-CoV-2 pandemic

TL;DR

This study uses an agent-based model to identify optimal COVID-19 vaccination and social distancing strategies, revealing that broad first-dose vaccination and targeted age prioritization effectively control the epidemic.

Contribution

It introduces a new methodology for calibrating infection rates based on vaccination efficacy within an agent-based model for COVID-19.

Findings

First-dose vaccination across the entire population reduces deaths.

An optimal vaccination ratio for ages over 65 is approximately 4/5.

Broad vaccination with social distancing effectively controls the epidemic.

Abstract

Non-pharmacological interventions (NPIs), and in particular social distancing, in conjunction with the advent of effective vaccines at the end of 2020, aspired for the development of a protective immunity shield against the spread of SARS-CoV-2. The main question rose is related to the deployment strategy of the two doses with respect to the imposed NPIs and population age. In this study, an extended (SEIR) agent-based model on small-world networks was employed to identify the optimal policies against Covid 19 pandemic, including social distancing measures and mass vaccination. To achieve this, a new methodology is proposed to solve the inverse problem of calibrating an agent's infection rate with respect to vaccination efficacy. The results show that deploying the first vaccine dose across the whole population is sufficient to control the epidemic, with respect to deaths, even for low number of social contacts. Moreover, for the same range of social contacts, we found that there is an optimum ratio of vaccinating ages > 65 over the younger ones of 4/5.