Related papers: Efficacy versus abundancy: Comparing vaccination s…
We evaluate the efficiency of various heuristic strategies for allocating vaccines against COVID-19 and compare them to strategies found using optimal control theory. Our approach is based on a mathematical model which tracks the spread of…
Vaccines play a crucial role in the prevention and control of infectious diseases. However, the vaccine supply chain faces numerous challenges that hinder its efficiency. To address these challenges and enhance public health outcomes, many…
Vaccines not only directly protect vaccinated individuals but also contribute to protect the entire population via indirect herd-immunity benefits. However, researchers have long struggled to quantify these indirect effects at the…
In this work we analyze the evolution of voluntary vaccination in networked populations by entangling the spreading dynamics of an influenza-like disease with an evolutionary framework taking place at the end of each influenza season so…
The unfolding of pandemic influenza A(H1N1) for Fall 2009 in the Northern Hemisphere is still uncertain. Plans for vaccination campaigns and vaccine trials are underway, with the first batches expected to be available early October. Several…
Infectious diseases are still a major global burden for modern society causing 13 million deaths annually. One way to reduce the morbidity and mortality rates from infectious diseases is through preventative or targeted vaccinations.…
The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic saw more severe outcomes for racial minority groups and economically-deprived communities. Such disparities can be explained by several factors, including unequal access to healthcare, as well as the…
We introduce a simple multiplicative model to describe the temporal behavior and the ultimate outcome of an epidemic. Our model accounts, in a minimalist way, for the competing influences of imposing public-health restrictions when the…
The initial period of vaccination shows strong heterogeneity between countries' vaccinations rollout, both in the terms of the start of the vaccination process and in the dynamics of the number of people that are vaccinated. A predominant…
We introduce a 2-layer network model for the study of the immunization dynamics in epidemics. Spreading of an epidemic is modeled as an excitatory process in a small-world network (body layer) while immunization by prevention for the…
Epidemic models are always simplifications of real world epidemics. Which real world features to include, and which simplifications to make, depend both on the disease of interest and on the purpose of the modelling. In the present paper we…
This article considers the minimization of the total number of infected individuals over the course of an epidemic in which the rate of infectious contacts can be reduced by time-dependent nonpharmaceutical interventions. The societal and…
It is evident that increasing the intensive-care-unit (ICU) capacity and giving priority to admitting and treating younger patients will reduce the number of COVID-19 deaths, but a quantitative assessment of these measures has remained…
Determining whether vaccine efficacy wanes is important for individual and public decision making. Yet, quantification of waning is a subtle task. The classical approaches cannot be interpreted as measures of declining efficacy unless we…
One way to investigate the precision of estimates likely to result from planned experiments and planned epidemiological studies is to simulate a large number of possible outcomes and analyse the sets of possible results. This appears to be…
The last two centuries have seen a significant increase in life expectancy. Although past trends suggest that mortality will continue to decline in the future, uncertainty and instability about the development is greatly increased due to…
Consider the causal effect that one individual's treatment may have on another individual's outcome when the outcome is contagious, with specific application to the effect of vaccination on an infectious disease outcome. The effect of one…
Effective and efficient scheduling of vaccine distribution can significantly impact vaccine uptake, which is critical to controlling the spread of infectious diseases. Ineffective scheduling can lead to waste, delays, and low vaccine…
The global SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted the challenge of equitable vaccine distribution between high- and low-income countries. Many high-income countries were reluctant or slow to distribute extra doses of the vaccine to…
Short-term forecasts of infectious disease spread are a critical component in risk evaluation and public health decision making. While different models for short-term forecasting have been developed, open questions about their relative…