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To evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a booster strategy in the United States. We developed a decision-analytic Markov model of COVID-19 to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of a booster strategy of the Pfizer-BioNTech BNT162b2 (administered 6 months after the second dose) among older adults from a healthcare system perspective. Compared with 2 doses of BNT162b2 without a booster, the booster strategy in a 100,000 cohort of older adults would incur an additional cost of $3.4 million in vaccination cost but save $6.7 million in direct medical cost and gain 3.7 quality-adjusted life-years in 180 days. This corresponds to a benefit-cost ratio of 1.95 and a net monetary benefit of $3.4 million. Probabilistic sensitivity analysis indicates that a booster strategy has a high chance (67%) of being cost-effective. Notably, the cost-effectiveness of the booster strategy is highly sensitive to the population incidence of COVID-19, with a cost-effectiveness threshold of 8.1/100,000 person-day. If vaccine efficacies reduce by 10%, 30%, and 50%, this threshold will increase to 9.7/100,000, 13.9/100,000, and 21.9/100,000 person-day, respectively. Offering the BNT162b2 booster to older adults aged ≥65 years in the United States is likely to be cost-effective. Less efficacious vaccines and boosters may still be cost-effective in settings of high SARS-CoV-2 transmission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The unprecedented COVID‐19 pandemic has affected human lives at all levels. Maps visualizing this pandemic have become a valuable tool for public to retrieve and understand the situation in their areas of interest. Some earlier maps visualize information at the level of country or state in the United States, but viewers could not access information at a finer level such as county. Motivated by the necessity of visualizing information at a finer level, this study designs a thematic map displaying confirmed COVID‐19 cases at the county level in the State of New York. The thematic map utilizes a choropleth design with defined data classification and colors for symbolization. This study then evaluates this designed thematic map with two other published maps: one from the New York State Department of Health and one from The New York Times. The evaluation collects 147 valid responses from public all over the world. Results show that choropleth design yields higher accuracy of map understanding. In addition, the designed map in this study receives higher preference among participants. This study suggests the importance of understanding the data, readers, and mapping purpose in the decision of data classification and symbolization in map design, as it contributes largely to the effectiveness of map interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]