Dynamic Vaccine Prioritization via Non-Markovian Final-state Optimization

TL;DR

This paper introduces a non-Markovian epidemic model that captures memory effects, enabling real-time long-term vaccine prioritization strategies that outperform static and short-term approaches by balancing direct and indirect protection.

Contribution

It develops a novel non-Markovian epidemic framework with a Markovian mapping for efficient long-term prediction and dynamic vaccine prioritization.

Findings

Outperforms static and heuristic vaccination policies

Uncovers mechanisms driving prioritization shifts during epidemics

Enables real-time long-term epidemic outcome prediction

Abstract

Effective vaccine prioritization is critical for epidemic control, yet real outbreaks exhibit memory effects that inflate state space and make long-term prediction and optimization challenging. As a result, many strategies are tuned to short-term objectives and overlook how vaccinating certain individuals indirectly protects others. We develop a general age-stratified non-Markovian epidemic model that captures memory dynamics and accommodates diverse epidemic models within one framework via state aggregation. Building on this, we map non-Markovian final states to an equivalent Markovian representation, enabling real-time fast direct prediction of long-term epidemic outcomes under vaccination. Leveraging this mapping, we design a dynamic prioritization strategy that continually allocates doses to minimize the predicted long-term final epidemic burden, explicitly balancing indirect transmission blocking with the direct protection of important groups and outperforming static policies and those short-term heuristics that target only immediate direct effects. We further uncover the underlying mechanism that drives shifts in vaccine prioritization as the epidemic progresses and coverage accumulates, underscoring the importance of adaptive allocations. This study renders long-term prediction tractable in systems with memory and provides actionable guidance for optimal vaccine deployment.