Optimizing vaccine allocation in an age-structured SIR model

TL;DR

This paper develops an optimal control framework for vaccine distribution in an age-structured SIR epidemic model, aiming to minimize casualties with limited vaccine resources.

Contribution

It introduces a novel static optimization reformulation for vaccine allocation in an age-structured epidemic model, providing insights into optimal distribution strategies.

Findings

Optimal vaccine allocation minimizes casualties under supply constraints.

The static optimization approach simplifies the complex dynamic control problem.

Qualitative properties of optimal vaccine distributions are derived.

Abstract

We study an optimal control problem where the objective is to find the best vaccine allocation during an epidemic outbreak. The epidemic dynamics is described by an age-structured SIR model with nonlocal interactions. Both the infection and death rates depend on the age of the individuals, reflecting the effect of heterogeneities within the population. Our model includes a vaccination term, depending on time and age, which serves as a control function. The aim is to minimize the impact of the epidemic, that is, the number of casualties, under the constraint of limited vaccine supply. In a first part, we show that our optimization problem is equivalent to another static optimization problem. We then use this new optimization problem to obtain qualitative properties for the optimal allocations of vaccines.