1. Utilizing direct and indirect information to improve the COVID-19 vaccination booster scheduling.
- Author
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Dery, Yotam, Yechezkel, Matan, Ben-Gal, Irad, and Yamin, Dan
- Subjects
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BOOSTER vaccines , *COVID-19 vaccines , *COMMUNICABLE diseases , *COVID-19 pandemic , *INFECTIOUS disease transmission , *DISEASE incidence - Abstract
Current global COVID-19 booster scheduling strategies mainly focus on vaccinating high-risk populations at predetermined intervals. However, these strategies overlook key data: the direct insights into individual immunity levels from active serological testing and the indirect information available either through sample-based sero-surveillance, or vital demographic, location, and epidemiological factors. Our research, employing an age-, risk-, and region-structured mathematical model of disease transmission—based on COVID-19 incidence and vaccination data from Israel between 15 May 2020 and 25 October 2021—reveals that a more comprehensive strategy integrating these elements can significantly reduce COVID-19 hospitalizations without increasing existing booster coverage. Notably, the effective use of indirect information alone can considerably decrease COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, without the need for additional vaccine doses. This approach may also be applicable in optimizing vaccination strategies for other infectious diseases, including influenza. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2024
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