COVID-19 vaccines have been approved for children of age five and older in many countries. However, there is an ongoing debate as to whether children should be vaccinated and at what priority. In this work, we use mathematical modeling and optimization to study how vaccine allocations to different age groups effect epidemic outcomes. In particular, we consider the effect of extending vaccination campaigns to include the vaccination of children. When vaccine availability is limited, we consider Pareto-optimal allocations with respect to competing measures of the number of infections and mortality and systematically study the trade-offs among them. In the scenarios considered, when some weight is given to the number of infections, we find that it is optimal to allocate vaccines to adolescents in the age group 10-19, even when they are assumed to be less susceptible than adults. We further find that age group 0-9 is included in the optimal allocation for sufficiently high values of the basic reproduction number. Author summary The management of a vaccination campaign requires constant evaluation, and, as conditions change, redesign of the campaign for the future. One example of a change that leads to a decision point is the extension of vaccine eligibility to broader segments of the population. Indeed, one of the questions public health experts and policymakers confront is whether children of age 5 and older should be vaccinated against COVID-19 and at what priority. In this work, we use mathematical and computational methods to study this question in a systematic, quantitative way, by considering optimal outcomes, under different criteria for optimality, that can be achieved with and without vaccination of children, under conditions of limited vaccine availability. To explore tradeoffs among different goals, such as reducing the number of infections and reducing mortality, we use the the idea of Pareto optimization. Our results show that, under a broad range of conditions, optimal vaccine allocations include vaccination of age group 10–19, while the population-level benefits of vaccination of age group 0–9 depend on the reproductive number and vaccine availability.
【초록키워드】 public health, Vaccine, COVID-19 vaccine, vaccination, Mortality, children, Infection, outcomes, Adults, Epidemic, infections, management, basic reproduction number, age, group, Quantitative, criteria, Older, measure, reducing mortality, vaccine eligibility, vaccine availability, computational method, extension, trade-off, susceptible, FIVE, benefit, example, include, approved, condition, less, question, reducing, conditions, competing, reproductive, mathematical, assumed, vaccinated against COVID-19, 【제목키워드】 Vaccine, vaccination,