Evaluation of the United States COVID-19 Vaccine Allocation Strategy

• Activity Number: 140 - Disease Outbreak and Modeling Applications in Defense and National Security
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 8, 2022 : 10:30 AM to 12:20 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Defense and National Security
• Author(s): Audrey McCombs* and Md Rafiul Islam and Tamer Oraby and Mohammad Mihrab Chowdhury and Mohammad Al-Mamun and Michael Tyshenko and Claus Kadelka
• Companies: Sandia National Laboratories and Iowa State University and University of Texas Rio Grand Valley and Texas Tech University and West Virginia University and University of Ottowa and Iowa State University
• Keywords: COVID-19; vaccination; CDC; vaccine allocation; optimization

Abstract

Anticipating an initial shortage of vaccines for COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in the United States developed priority vaccine allocations for specific demographic groups in the population. This study evaluates the performance of the CDC vaccine allocation strategy with respect to multiple potentially competing vaccination goals. Our compartmental disease model, incorporating key elements of the current pandemic, was used to compare the CDC strategy to all other possibly optimal allocations (17.5 million strategies). The CDC allocation strategy performed well in all vaccination goals but never optimally; under the developed model, it deviated from the optimal allocations by 0.2% to 4.1%. The CDC decision to not prioritize the vaccination of individuals under the age of 16 was optimal, as was the prioritization of health-care workers and other essential workers. A higher prioritization of individuals with comorbidities in all age groups improved outcomes compared to the CDC allocation. The developed approach can be used to inform the design of future vaccine allocations strategies in the US and elsewhere.