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Dynamic Optimization of COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization in The Context of Limited Supply
Dynamic Optimization of COVID-19 Vaccine Prioritization in The Context of Limited Supply
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Version of Record: A version of this preprint was published at Nature Communications on August 3rd,
2021. See the published version at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24872-5.
Dynamic optimization of COVID-19 vaccine prioritization in the context of
limited supply
Shasha Han1,2*, Jun Cai3*, Juan Yang3, Juanjuan Zhang3, Qianhui Wu3, Wen Zheng3, Huilin
Shi3, Marco Ajelli4,5#, Xiao-Hua Zhou1,6#†, Hongjie Yu3,7,8,9#†
1. Beijing International Center for Mathematical Research, Peking University, Beijing, China
2. Harvard Medical School, Harvard University, Boston, MA, USA.
3. School of Public Health, Fudan University, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety,
Ministry of Education, Shanghai, China
4. Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Indiana University School of Public Health,
Bloomington, IN, USA
5. Laboratory for the Modelling of Biological and Socio-technical Systems, Northeastern
University, Boston, MA, USA
6. Department of Biostatistics, School of Public Health, Peking University, Beijing, China
7. Department of Infectious Diseases, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
8. Shanghai Key Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Biosafety Emergency Response,
Shanghai, China
9. Shanghai Institute of Infectious Disease and Biosecurity, Fudan University
#
These authors are joint senior authors contributed equally to this work.
†
To whom correspondence should be addressed to:
1
Summary
limited supply that is expected to last for most, if not the entire, 2021. Dynamically adapting the
allocation strategy to the evolving epidemiological situation could thus be critical during this
transmission to explore optimal vaccine prioritization strategies in China that aim at reducing
COVID-19 burden measured through different metrics. We found that reactively adapting the
vaccination program to the epidemiological situation (i.e., allocate vaccine to a target group
before reaching full coverage of other groups with initial higher priority) can be highly beneficial
as such strategies are capable to simultaneously achieve different objectives (e.g., minimizing the
number of deaths and of infections). The highest priority categories are broadly consistent under
different hypotheses about vaccine efficacy, differential vaccine efficacy in preventing infection
vs. disease, vaccine hesitancy, and SARS-CoV-2 transmissibility. Our findings also suggest that
boosting the daily capacities up to 2.5 million courses (0.17% rollout speed) or higher could
greatly reduce COVID-19 burden should a new wave start to unfold in China with reproduction
number equal to 1.5 or lower. Finally, we estimate that a high vaccine supply in the early phase
Words: 2210
2
Introduction
Vaccination is promising to end the COVID-19 pandemic while allowing restoring social
activities 1,2. However, the anticipated global vaccine capacity in 2021 would not be enough to
vaccinate every human being on the planet 3,4. The situation may be worse if we account for
countries, more than half of the world’s population would probably remain unvaccinated until
2023 3.
For 2021, China targets to reach a daily supply of about 2.78 million courses for a two-dose
considerable fraction of the Chinese population will not be covered until 2022. The long-term
shortfall in daily supply calls a strategic prioritization. Although optimal prioritization strategies
are estimated to provide a larger reduction of COVID-19 burden compared to a random mass
vaccination 7,8, they remain elusive and intrinsically connected to the target of the program (e.g.,
averting deaths vs. reducing the strain on the healthcare system) designed offline.
In this context of limited vaccine supply, it is of paramount importance for governments to set up
effective vaccination campaigns as COVID-19 cases can grow at a far higher pace than
immunity accumulates in the population. Therefore, defining vaccination strategies able to adapt
to the evolving epidemiological situation on the ground may be highly beneficial 8,9. Here we
propose a data-driven allocation model coupled with SARS-CoV-2 transmission to optimize the
prioritized allocation of vaccines to averting the largest possible number infections, symptomatic
3
Results
For each risk metric (infections, cases, hospital admissions, ICU admissions, and deaths), we
minimize the total incidences over 400 days. We consider 2.0 million courses supplied per day
(0.14% rollout speed), as estimated from manufacturing data in China. Daily allocation decisions
are coupled with the transmission dynamics of an epidemic spreading under the hypothesis the
number R at 1.5.
When the vaccination program aims to minimize the number of SARS-CoV-2 infections, we
estimate that the optimal strategy prioritizes individuals aged 15-39 year until 46.6% coverage is
reached; then, vaccines are administered to individuals aged 40-64 years until 26.9% coverage is
reached (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1). Different age-prioritizations are identified if the goal
is to reduce SARS-CoV-2 severe outcomes. For example, to minimize the number of deaths,
individuals aged 65 years and older are identified as the first priority until 58.6% coverage is
reached, followed by aged 40-64 until 18.5% coverage and then aged 65+ until an almost full
coverage is achieved (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1). To minimize the number of ICU
admissions, first priority is given to individuals aged 65+ years and nearly all of them need to be
vaccinated before moving to other age groups (Fig. 1 and Supplementary Fig. 1).
Optimal prioritization strategies, although performing best to achieve their specific goals, are
million hospital admissions (88.6-89.5% reduction), 3.62-3.81 million ICU admissions (88.2-
92.7% reduction), and 5.83-6.15 million deaths (87.4-92.3% reduction) (Fig. 2a-e). We compare
the five optimal prioritization strategies with a uniform strategy (random mass vaccination)
4
where vaccines are allocated proportionally to the size of the unvaccinated susceptible
population in each age group. We estimate that the optimal prioritization strategies perform
dramatically better than the uniform strategy with respect to any risk metric (more than 87%
We conduct a univariate analysis to explore the impact of key parameters on the definition of the
priority groups and coverages as well as the benefits of the optimal prioritization strategies. We
estimate that, for each optimal strategy, the two age categories with the highest priority are
broadly consistent under different hypotheses on vaccine supply, vaccine efficacy, differential
vaccine efficacy in preventing infection and disease, vaccine hesitancy, and SARS-CoV-2
transmissibility. Not only the identified priority orders are identical (See Fig.1, Extended Data
Figs. 3, 6 and 9), but also the associated coverages show only little variations in most cases
cases or hospitalizations, the identified priory orders may change when we consider alternative
Considering R=1.5, we estimate that the advantage of optimal prioritization strategies over a
uniform mass vaccination increases with vaccine supply 2.0 million courses per day (0.14%
rollout speed) is reached and decreases as the supply further increases. When the supply is
sufficiently large (3.5 million courses; 0.24% rollout speed), also a uniform mass vaccination
would be sufficient to avert nearly all deaths as compared with an epidemic controlled with NPIs
only (R=1.5). The advantage of the optimal strategies with respect to a uniform vaccination
remain unaltered for variations in all other parameters regulating the vaccination, namely vaccine
efficacy, differential vaccine efficacy in preventing infection vs. disease, and vaccine hesitancy
5
Considering alternative values of R (and thus different levels of NPIs) greatly affects the
effectiveness of these strategies, and thus the relative advantages of optimal strategies to the
mass vaccination. The benefits are negligible when R = 1.25, as all strategies can reduce the
epidemic burden by almost 100%. For R larger than 1.5, the benefits may depend on the program
targets, e.g., only those aiming at minimizing deaths and ICUs performing markedly better than
the random mass vaccination in averting deaths or ICUs (Fig. 3e and Extended Data Fig. 8d).
We also test an alternative vaccine model, replacing the baseline all-or-nothing mechanism (i.e.,
vaccines provide full protection for a fraction of vaccinated individuals with fractions given by
the vaccine efficacy), with the “leaky model”, where all vaccinated individuals are exposed to a
lower risk of infection corresponding to the vaccine efficacy (see Methods). The leaky model
identifies optimal prioritization strategies highly similar to those for the all-or-nothing model
(Extended Data Fig. 9). However, the estimated effectiveness of the vaccination strategies is
remarkably lower, especially for low levels of vaccine supply (Supplementary Figs. 2 and 3).
Finally, we investigate the vaccine supply needed for a prioritized vaccination campaign to keep
the total number of deaths under 10,000. We estimate that, for R=1.5 and all-or-nothing vaccine,
the minimal daily supply corresponds to 3.5 million courses (0.24% of the population).
Discussion
Our results show that COVID-19 vaccination strategies able to adapt to the evolving
epidemiological situation can greatly reduce COVID-19 burden. The optimal vaccination
strategies with specific program targets (e.g., minimize the number of deaths) are shown to be
driven by the targeted risks of population segments as epidemic unfolds. Benefits of optimal
strategies as comparison to random mass vaccination is substantial when the supply is modestly
6
low, or the transmission is modestly high. Nonetheless, the random mass vaccination may
sufficiently high (Extended Data Fig. 2a), the transmissibility R controlled be at a very low level
(Extended Data Fig. 2c), or the vaccine be administered to individuals aged 15-64 years only
(Extended Data Fig. 5c) – i.e., the age groups for which the administrated vaccine in the early
Given the uncertainty still surrounding many of the key parameters regulating the vaccination
process, we tested several scenarios on vaccine supply, vaccine efficacy, differential vaccine
efficacy in preventing infection vs. disease (Extended Data Fig. 4), and vaccine hesitancy of the
population (Extended Data Fig. 5) as well as two alternative vaccine mechanisms (“all-or-
nothing” vs. “leaky” vaccine; Extended Data Fig. 9). We found that all those factors have little
effect in determining the optimal prioritization strategies. Although this increases the confidence
in our findings, it is important to stress that the identified optimal strategies could be sensible to
hospitalizations). This highlights the need to potentially adapt vaccination choices to the
implemented NPIs.
Our findings suggest that boosting the daily capacities into 2.5 million courses (0.17% rollout
speed) or higher could greatly reduce COVID-19 burden would a new wave start to unfold in
China. Moreover, we estimate that a high vaccine supply in the early phase of the vaccination
campaign is key to achieve large gains of strategic prioritizations. All strategies result in a much
larger disease burden when vaccine rollouts gradually increase over time (although the same
7
It is key to remark that our baseline results are obtained by assuming R=1.5, with NPIs
implemented throughout the entire vaccine rollouts. As a consequence, our results neither
provide estimates of the herd immunity threshold for COVID-19 nor can be used to estimate the
Our study adds to the literature in several ways. First, although investigating dynamic vaccine
allocation is not novel, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation at the
population level and in a data-driven context accounting for estimates of vaccine supply.
Dynamic vaccine allocation allows the campaign to track the eligible population and adapt the
targeted vaccination populations to the evolving epidemiological situation, and thus protect
individuals who are at the highest risks at each time. Second, previous studies have shown that
optimal prioritization strategies for single objectives (e.g., minimize the number of death) may
sacrifice secondary objectives (e.g., minimize the number of infections) 10. Instead, our results
show that, thanks to the data-driven dynamic allocations, the sacrifices are lower than previously
estimated. Indeed, the dynamic optimal allocations can quickly react to changes in age-specific
risks (e.g., of infection, hospitalization) over time. This finding supports the relevance of both
direct and indirect protection of the population11 to define prioritized vaccination strategies. Our
findings are of particularly relevance for China at this early phase of vaccine rollout when
vaccination is restricted to people mainly aged 18-59, due to the lack of vaccine safety and
To properly interpret our findings, it is important to consider the limitations of the performed
analysis. First, the analysis is based on a deterministic model and does not consider the
stochasticity of the real-world infection transmission process, although the former can be
considered as a good approximation of the latter when the number of infections is large. In the
8
early phase of the epidemic, the stochastic variability may affect the timing of the epidemic peak,
average values of model parameters (e.g., the contact matrix, age-specific estimates of the
susceptibility to infection). Despite we recognize lack of estimates of the uncertainty around our
point projections, we have conducted extensive sensitivity analysis showing to what extent
model parameters affect the obtained results. Second, we leveraged contact data collected before
the COVID-19 pandemic to model SARS-CoV-2 transmission through 2021 and accounted for
the impact of NPIs on contact numbers though a reduction on R, but the future contact pattern by
age remains elusive. Moreover, we used the contact pattern data collected in Shanghai and
extrapolated it into the entire China. Although this surely represents a limitation, several
independent studies showed little variation in age-mixing patterns across China 12–14 . Third, for
model tractability, we optimize allocation of only the first dose of the two-dose vaccines and
simply require that the second dose to be administrated following the schedule, although this
In sum, our analysis identified optimal COVID-19 vaccination prioritizations as the epidemic
unfolds. Our model-based evaluation highlights the benefit of these strategies in simultaneously
minimizing different objectives (e.g., number of deaths and infections). Finally, the modeling
framework presented here general enough to be adopted by other countries to identify optimal
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Fig. 1 | Estimated vaccine coverages over time for different prioritization strategies (0.14% rollout speed, R = 1.5). a-e, Five optimal prioritization
strategies minimizing the total incidence of infections, symptomatic cases, hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths, respectively. f, Uniform vaccination
strategy. Shaded area refers to vaccine administration to the general populations. Lines refers to the vaccinated proportions including essential workers. Keys and
labels apply to all panels.
13
Fig. 2 | Risk incidences for different prioritization strategies and the scenario with no vaccination (0.14% rollout speed, R = 1.5). a, Number of averted
infections under the scenario with no vaccination, uniform vaccination strategy, and the five optimal prioritization strategies we identified. b-e, As panel a, but
for the number of symptomatic cases, hospitalizations, ICUs, and deaths, respectively. f, Averted proportion of infections, symptomatic cases, hospitalizations,
ICUs, and deaths for the six vaccination strategies as compared to the scenario with no vaccination. Keys apply to all panels.
14
Fig. 3 | Effectiveness of alternative vaccination strategies under alternative assumptions. a, Averted proportion of deaths for different strategies (uniform
vaccination and the five optimal strategies) as compared to no vaccination for different values of the daily vaccine supply. b, As a, but for different values of the
vaccine efficacy. c, As a, but assuming that the vaccine may have a lower efficacy in preventing the infection (namely 60% and 70%) than in preventing the
disease (which is kept fixed at 80%). d, As a, but considering possible vaccine hesitancy. In particular, we consider three alternative scenarios: i) “Whole
population”, i.e., all individuals are willing to accept the vaccine; ii) “Chinese survey”, i.e., on average 83% of the population is willing to accept the vaccine as
estimated in a survey conducted on the Chinese population 15 (age-specific estimates reported in Extended Data Table 2); iii) “Global survey”, i.e., on average
61% of the population is willing to accept the vaccine as estimated in a survey at the global level 16. e, As a, but for different values of the reproduction number.
Keys and labels apply to all panels. Results for other risk metrics are similar and displayed in Extended Data Fig.8.
15
Methods
Model
64,65-69,70-74,75-79,80+; total number of age groups denoted with J}. For each age group, the
vaccinated individuals (V), unprotected individuals who received the vaccine (U), infectious
individuals (I), and immune individuals (either recovered from the infection or protected by the
vaccine) (R) (Extended Data Fig. 1). Note that the infectious compartment (I) includes both
found between them 17 and we are not explicitly simulating interventions that act differently on
The transmission depends on contacts between susceptible and infectious individuals and the risk
of infection given a contact (). Contacts are modeled through the use of a contact matrix Ci,j
representing the mean number of contacts that an individual in age group i has with individuals
in age group j. Contact patterns are estimated by relying on 2017/2018 survey data for Shanghai
18
. We use bootstrap (sample with replacement where the sampling weights are given by the
distributions of age groups in China) to estimate mixing patterns at the country level 18. We
estimate the contact patterns using the package ‘socialmixr’ in R version 4.0.3 19. The resulting
contact matrix is shown in Supplementary Fig. 6. The number of individuals in each age group is
taken from Chinese statistical year book 2019 20 and denoted with Ni.
16
We also consider age-specific susceptibility to infection si as estimated in reference 17. For
simplicity, we denote the contact matrix multiplied by the susceptibility to infection by age as
Csi,j= siCi,j. The mean generation time is set at 5.5 days 17 (and the rate of transition, which is the
We consider 1/w days from the administration of the first vaccine dose to maxim protection 21
(and denote the transition rate with w); ei represents the vaccine efficacy for age group i. Further,
we denote by vi(t) the allocation decision variables for age group i on the day t. We consider “all-
or-nothing” mechanism, where vaccines are assumed to provide fully immunity for ei
J
dSi (t) Ij (t)
= -vi (t)-(Si (t)-vi (t))⋅β ∑ Ci,j𝑠
dt Nj
j=1
J
dVi (t) Ij (t)
= vi (t)-w(Vi (t)+vi (t))-(1-w)(Vi (t)+vi (t))⋅β ∑ Ci,j𝑠
dt Nj
j=1
J
dUi (t) Ij (t) (1)
= (1-ei )⋅w(Vi (t)+vi (t))-Ui (t)⋅β ∑ Ci,j𝑠
dt Nj
j=1
J
dIi (t) Ij (t)
= (Si (t)+Ui (t)+(1-w)Vi (t)-wvi (t))⋅β ∑ Ci,j𝑠 - Ii (t)
dt Nj
j=1
dRi (t)
= Ii (t)+ei ⋅w(Vi (t)+vi (t)).
dt
hospitalizations, ICUs, and deaths, that we refer to as “risk” metric. We then use the model to
minimize the total risk incidence, namely the sum of daily new risk incidences over T days, for
17
T-1 J
min ∑ ∑ rtype
i ∙ (Ii (t+1)-(1-γ)Ii (t)),
t=0 i=1
(2)
where ritype, type {symp, hosp, ICU, death, infec}, represents that, among infections, the risks of
symptomatic infections, requiring hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths in age group i,
Baseline scenario
We assume that the vaccine efficacy to prevent the infection is the same as the vaccine efficacy
in preventing the disease. The efficacy of the vaccine currently administrated in China was
estimated to be 80% for the age group 15-59 years 22; for the other age groups we used a 25%
reduction 23,24 (i.e., 0.7580%). We assume that the first dose is given upon allocation and does
not confer protection 21,23. Vaccinated people may get protection after the second dose take
effect, 14 days after its administration plus 21 days after the first dose (i.e., w=1/(14+21) day-1)
21
. We also assume the vaccines has a long-term immunity (i.e., longer than the full study period
T, T = 400, days).
The transmission rate is calculated using the next-generation matrices approach 25,
R∙
= max{engen values (Cs )} (3)
i,j
As baseline value, we assume the reproduction number R to be1.5, to account for the effect of
admission, and death are taken from the literature 26,27,28 and reported in Extended Data Table 2.
18
All the parameters in the study are calibrated based on state-of-the-art knowledge of COVID-19
epidemiology and vaccination in China. Extended Data Table 1 summarizes the parameters.
Sine only sporadic local transmission reported in China 29, we consider the vaccination starts at
the same time of an extensive epidemic outbreak with locally transmitted SARS-CoV-2
infections. The simulations are arbitrarily initialized with one infectious individual in each age
group. Since Wuhan was the only location in China that has experienced prolonged local SARS-
CoV-2 transmission, we assume a fully susceptible population at the beginning of the simulation.
Vaccination parameters
We estimate the daily vaccine supply at 2.0 million courses (0.14% rollout speed) by scaling
down the daily breakdowns from the targeted production capacity in 2021, accounting for
Each age group is stratified into two categories: essential workers (tier 1) and other individuals
(tier 2). Essential workers include healthcare workers (either front-line or not) and workers in the
following sectors: law enforcement and security, nursing home and social welfare institutes,
community, energy, food and transportation 30. Vaccination is administered to essential workers
first 30,31. Then, we investigate optimal vaccine allocation strategies to the general population.
Optimization methods
We explore a two-step optimization strategy to solve model ( 2 ). First, we solve the problem
using the myopic strategy where we minimize daily outcomes iteratively for 400 days. Second,
we use the dynamics from the myopic strategy to construct an approximation counterpart and
solve it over the full period. Although the myopic strategy does not attempt to minimize the total
19
outcomes over the full period, they greatly reduce the total outcomes, performing close to the
Due to the tier constraint in vaccine allocation, we break down the vaccine allocation for each
for each i = 1, …, J.
Step 1: Myopic optimal strategy. At the beginning of each day, we optimize vaccine allocation
20
J
type
min ∑ ri ∙ (Ii (t+1)-(1-γ)Ii (t)), (5𝑎)
i=1
2 J
Nj,1
vi,1 (t)≥c⋅ ( -b (t)) , i=1,…,J, (5h)
∑j=1 Nj,1 i
J
Constraint (5a) minimizes the total risk incidence across age groups on that day. Vaccine
allocations across tiers and age groups cannot exceed the daily supplied vaccines (constraint 5b)
or the unvaccinated susceptible populations (constraint 5c). Constraint (5d) tracks the cumulative
number of allocated vaccines for each age group within each tier, denoted by Wi,k(t), and
constraint (5e) limits the cumulative number of allocated vaccines, where di,k represents the
maximum coverage for age group i within tier k and Ni,k the population size for age group i
within tier k. Constraints (5f) and (5g) guarantee that people in the first tier are allocated prior to
people in the second tier. M is a large number, with M = c + Nj,1 in the implementation.
Constraint (5h) ensures that vaccines are uniformly allocated among age groups in the first tier.
Model ( 5 ) is a linear optimization problem with box constraints. Geometrically, the optimal
solutions rest at the corners of the polyhedron comprised by the box constraints. Note that
21
type Ij (t)
objective (5a) is equivalent to ∑Ji=1 ri (Si (t)+(1-w)Vi (t)+Ui (t)-w ∑2k=1 vi,k (t))⋅β ∑Jj=1 Csi,j . The
Nj
myopic optimization thus determines the prioritization based on the modeled risk metrics.
Namely, the myopic policy gives the highest priority to the age group that has the largest risk at
the time t. If the number of unvaccinated susceptible population is smaller than the daily supply
c, it then diverts to the age group that has the second largest risk. If there are vaccines left after
satisfying the first two groups, it further diverts to the third group that has the third largest risk,
and so forth. Moreover, because the myopic optimal strategy performs well and close to the
optimal solution in similar problems 32,33, the final optimal solutions is expected to share similar
properties to it.
The model was coded in Gurobi R interface with R version 4.0.3 19 and solved using Gurobi 9.10
34
. We simplify the implementation of the model by replacing the last three constraints on
uniformly to the age groups in tier 1, and then use the remaining vaccine supply, if there is any,
Using aggregated vi(t), i = 1, …, J, from the myopic solutions, we update all the states to get the
states status on day t + 1. We solve the equations using lsoda ODE solver from the package
‘deSolve’ 35 in R version 4.0.3 19. This iteration of optimization-updating procedure was repeated
from day 0 to day T, generating the myopic solutions for the full period.
Step 2: Approximated optimization. Using the myopic solutions from the Step 1, we explore
the approximation strategy and minimize the total outcomes of the targeted risk metric. The full
model is:
22
T-1 J
type
min ∑ ∑ ri ∙ (Ii (t+1)-(1-γ)Ii (t)) (6a)
t=0 i=1
2 J
Nj,1
vi,1 (t)≥c⋅ ( -b (t)) , i=1,…,J, t=0,…,T, (6h)
∑j=1 Nj,1 i
J
J J Myopic(t)
Ij t() r j
I
|∑ Cri,j - ∑ Ci,j | ≤ϵ, t=0,…,T, (6i)
Nj Nj
j=1 j=1
Myopic(t)
Equations (1) with Ij (t) replaced by Ij , t=0,…,T,
bi ∈{0,1}, Si (t),Ii (t),Vi (t),Ui (t)≥0, i=1,…,J, t=0,…,T.
Constraint (6i) bounds the error of approximation. is a small number to control the
approximation errors.
To choose the candidate myopic optimal solutions (denoted with IjMyopic(t)) for constructing the
approximation counterpart in the second step, we use the "try and error" method to test varying
di,k. We found that the myopic strategy with di,k set around 80% performs well. In particular, we
found that the myopic solution minimizing the incidence of infections perform relatively well on
the other four risk metrics as well. We therefore use the myopic solutions from the scenario to
construct the approximation counterparts where we set di,k = 1, i = 1,…, J, k = 1, 2, in (6e). The
model was coded in Gurobi Python interface with Python 3.9.0 36, and solved using Gurobi 9.10
34
.
23
Sensitivity analyses
Vaccine supply
We explore different levels of vaccine supply c = 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 million courses per
day. Moreover, as vaccine production capacity may increase over time, we consider a scenario
where the vaccine supply linearly increases from 1.5 million courses on the first day to 2.5
Reproduction number
We explore different levels of R = 1.25, 1.5, 1.75, 2.0.
Vaccine efficacy
While more evidence about vaccine efficacy is collected, we test alternative levels of vaccine
efficacy: ei = 0.6, 0.7, 0.9, for i = 4, …., 12 and ei = 0.6 0.75, 0.7 0.75 or 0.9 0.75 for i 3
or i 14.
Vaccine hesitancy
People may be hesitant to accept a COVID-19 vaccine for a variety of reasons 37. To model
vaccine hesitancy, we let di,k in (6e) to be equivalent to the vaccine acceptancy, ai,k. We estimate
ai,k by using the data from a large-scale telephone survey conducted on June 2020 18. The
potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine within the first tier was estimated to be 96%. The
estimated potential acceptance in the second tier is relatively stable by age, ranging from 78% to
89% (see Extended Data Table 2). Further, we conduct an analysis assuming 61% as vaccine
acceptance for all age groups, as estimated in reference 16 where a global-scale survey was
conducted.
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Differential vaccine efficacy in preventing infection vs. disease
In baseline, we have assumed the vaccine efficacy is the same in preventing both the infection
and the disease. Here we conduct an alternative analysis with 60% efficacy for preventing the
infection, but three efficacy levels in preventing the disease, namely: 60%, 80% and 90%.
Specifically, we set ei = 0.6, ei Symp = 0.6, 0.8 or 0.9, for i = 4, …., 12, and ei = 0.6 0.75, ei Symp =
0.6 0.75, 0.8 0.75 or 0.9 0.75 for i 3 or i 14. This feature is incorporated into the model
by defining new risk of disease after vaccination, riVac_symp, by adjusting the risk of developing
symptoms as follows:
Symp Symp
Vac_Symp ri ∙(1-ei )
ri = Symp Symp Symp Asymp
,
ri ∙(1-ei )+(1-ri )∙(1-ei )
Following the same arguments used in the baseline scenario (see Methods), we update the risk of
requiring hospitalization, ICU admission, and death as well (riVac_hosp, riVac_ICU, riVac_death).
Excluding individuals aged under 15 years and over 65 years in vaccine rollout
Because optimal prioritization strategy aiming to minimize infections does not allocate to people
under 15 and over 65, we test the scenario where these age groups are excluded in vaccinations.
Leaky mechanism
We also consider a variant of model ( 1 ) where, for each age group i, instead of assuming a fully
induces an ei reduction of the risk of infection (“leaky” vaccine) for all vaccinated individuals.
25
J
dSi (t) s Ij
(t)
= -vi (t)-(Si (t)-vi (t))⋅β ∑ Ci,j
dt Nj
j=1
J
dVi (t) s Ij
(t)
= vi (t)-w(Vi (t)+vi (t))-(1-w)(Vi (t)+vi (t))⋅β ∑ Ci,j
dt Nj
j=1
J
dUi (t) s Ij
(t) (7)
= w(Vi (t)+vi (t))-Ui (t)⋅(1-ei )⋅β ∑ Ci,j
dt Nj
j=1
J
dIi (t) Ij (t)
= (Si (t)+Ui (t)⋅(1-ei )+(1-w)Vi (t)-wvi (t))⋅β ∑ Csi,j - Ii (t)
dt Nj
j=1
dRi (t)
= Ii (t).
dt
The full analysis conducted for the baseline scenario (all-or-nothing vaccine, R = 1.5) is repeated
for the leaky vaccine model. To further investigate the discrepancies between the two models, we
explore different levels of vaccine supply c = 1.5, 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 million courses per day for
leaky model. Compared to the all-or-nothing model, the averted incidences under the leaky
model are sustainably smaller with small supply, but close with large supplies for optimal
prioritization strategies (3.5 million; Supplementary Fig. 2). Uniform strategy needs even larger
supplies to achieve close performances under the two models, e.g., 2.5 million under R = 1.25
The data analyzed in this study are presented in the online methods and supplementary information.
Acknowledgments
This study was supported by funding from the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young
Scholars (No. 81525023), Key Emergency Project of Shanghai Science and Technology
26
Committee (No. 20411950100), and the grants from National Science Fund of China (No.
Author contributions
H.Y. designed the study. M.A., X.-H.Z., and H.Y. supervised the work. S.H. developed the model.
S.H. and J.C. conducted the research. J.C., J.Z., Q.W., W.Z., and H.S. collected data. S.H., J.C.,
J.Y., M.A., X.-H.Z., and H.Y. interpreted the findings. S.H., J.C., and M.A. wrote the manuscript.
J.Y., X.-H.Z., and H.Y. commented on and revised the manuscript. All authors approved the final
manuscript as submitted.
Competing interests
M.A. has received research funding from Seqirus. H.Y. has received research funding from Sanofi
Roche Pharmaceutical Company. None of those research funding is related to COVID-19. All
27
Figures
Figure 1
Estimated vaccine coverages over time for different prioritization strategies (0.14% rollout speed, R = 1.5).
a-e, Five optimal prioritization strategies minimizing the total incidence of infections, symptomatic cases,
hospitalizations, ICU admissions, and deaths, respectively. f, Uniform vaccination strategy. Shaded area
refers to vaccine administration to the general populations. Lines refers to the vaccinated proportions
including essential workers. Keys and labels apply to all panels.
Figure 2
Risk incidences for different prioritization strategies and the scenario with no vaccination (0.14% rollout
speed, R = 1.5). a, Number of averted infections under the scenario with no vaccination, uniform
vaccination strategy, and the ve optimal prioritization strategies we identi ed. b-e, As panel a, but for the
number of symptomatic cases, hospitalizations, ICUs, and deaths, respectively. f, Averted proportion of
infections, symptomatic cases, hospitalizations, ICUs, and deaths for the six vaccination strategies as
compared to the scenario with no vaccination. Keys apply to all panels.
Figure 3
Supplementary Files
This is a list of supplementary les associated with this preprint. Click to download.
Supplementaryv21.docx