Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness

April 5, 2021

Dynamic Prioritization of COVID-19 Vaccines When Social Distancing Is Limited for Essential Workers

Category:

Topic:

Keywords (Tags): ,

  • A modeling study assessing vaccine allocation in the US across priority groups by age and essential worker status determined that prioritizing essential workers could potentially avert between 20,000 (when nonpharmaceutical interventions are strong) and 300,000 (when these interventions are weak) deaths. The authors suggest their findings indicate that optimal vaccine allocation may change over time, with the priority groups being those with high risk of infection initially, and then switching to targeting groups with high infection fatality.

Buckner et al. (Apr 20, 2021). Dynamic Prioritization of COVID-19 Vaccines When Social Distancing Is Limited for Essential Workers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2025786118