Related papers: Evaluating COVID-19 vaccine allocation policies us…
To mitigate the impact of the pandemic, several measures include lockdowns, rapid vaccination programs, school closures, and economic stimulus. These interventions can have positive or unintended negative consequences. Current research to…
In this paper, we present a decision support framework for optimizing multiple aspects of vaccine distribution across a multitier cold chain network. We propose two multi-period optimization formulations within this framework: first to…
The COVID-19 pandemic has caused severe public health consequences in the United States. In this study, we use a hierarchical Bayesian model to estimate the age-specific COVID-19 attributable deaths over time in the United States. The model…
Epidemiological models can not only be used to forecast the course of a pandemic like COVID-19, but also to propose and design non-pharmaceutical interventions such as school and work closing. In general, the design of optimal policies…
Accurate epidemic forecasting is critical for effective public health interventions. This study compares Bayesian and Frequentist estimation frameworks within deterministic compartmental epidemic models, focusing on nonlinear least squares…
With the present highly infectious dominant SARS-CoV-2 strain of B1.1.529 or Omicron spreading around the globe, there is concern that the COVID-19 pandemic will not end soon and that it will be a race against time until a more contagious…
Covid-19 has caused hundred of thousands of deaths and an economic damage amounting to trillions of dollars, creating a desire for the rapid development of vaccine. Once available, vaccine is gradually produced, evoking the question on how…
We analyze an optimal control version of a simple SIR epidemiology model that includes a partially specified vaccination policy and takes into account fatigue from protracted application of social distancing measures. The model assumes…
We consider online sequential decision problems where an agent must balance exploration and exploitation. We derive a set of Bayesian `optimistic' policies which, in the stochastic multi-armed bandit case, includes the Thompson sampling…
Following the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and pending the establishment of vaccination campaigns, several non pharmaceutical interventions such as partial and full lockdown, quarantine and measures of physical distancing have been…
Stochastic epidemic models which incorporate interactions between space and human mobility are a key tool to inform prioritisation of outbreak control to appropriate locations. However, methods for fitting such models to national-level…
We study decentralized protection strategies against Susceptible-Infected-Susceptible (SIS) epidemics on networks. We consider a population game framework where nodes choose whether or not to vaccinate themselves, and the epidemic risk is…
National responses to the Covid-19 pandemic varied markedly across countries, from business-as-usual to complete shutdowns. Policies aimed at disrupting the viral transmission cycle and preventing the healthcare system from being…
We study the problem of Bayesian fixed-budget best-arm identification (BAI) in structured bandits. We propose an algorithm that uses fixed allocations based on the prior information and the structure of the environment. We provide…
There has been an increasing interest in using interval-based Bayesian designs for dose finding, one of which is the modified toxicity probability interval (mTPI) method. We show that the decision rules in mTPI correspond to an optimal rule…
Peptide vaccines are growing in significance for fighting diverse diseases. Machine learning has improved the identification of peptides that can trigger immune responses, and the main challenge of peptide vaccine design now lies in…
Voluntary vaccination is essential to protect oneself from infection and suppress the spread of infectious diseases. Voluntary vaccination behavior is influenced by factors such as age and interaction patterns. Differences in health…
Approximate Bayesian computation is an established and popular method for likelihood-free inference with applications in many disciplines. The effectiveness of the method depends critically on the availability of well performing summary…
Epidemic risk assessment poses inherent challenges, with traditional approaches often failing to balance health outcomes and economic constraints. This paper presents a data-driven decision support tool that models epidemiological dynamics…
The COVID-19 pandemic provides new motivation for a classic problem in epidemiology: estimating the empirical rate of transmission during an outbreak (formally, the time-varying reproduction number) from case counts. While standard methods…