Vaccine rollouts are key for tackling the COVID-19 pandemic, but understanding which vaccination strategies lead to optimal outcomes is still a challenge. We analyzed early vaccine rollouts in poorer countries and found that early vaccine procurement, domestic production, the severity of a country’s outbreak, and its health infrastructure all play significant roles. We also modeled the impact of COVID-19 vaccinations on disease dynamics and health outcomes, including new cases and deaths, ICU admissions, and contact tracing.
Despite challenges, the initial vaccine deployment efforts were very successful. However, it is clear that more efforts are needed to improve the speed of vaccine delivery in order to vaccinate the largest number of people as quickly as possible.
To this end, the NYPD is enlisting supermarket pharmacies, which have the capacity to administer the vaccine, as well as regional and community organizations like the United Way and civic leaders. In addition, the city is continuing to use its existing testing and contact tracing infrastructure—such as pop-up COVID testing sites, Take Care program hotels, and Test & Trace kiosks—to increase reach in hard-to-reach areas.
Our results show that focusing on groups with high daily person-to-person interactions emerges as the most effective strategy to reduce total fatalities (up to 11% fewer). But, if children are excluded from the vaccination campaigns, prioritizing them by interaction is no longer superior and in fact may result in more deaths than if they were included in the allocation process.