Pandemic influenza A(H1N1) 2009 began spreading around the globe in April of 2009 and vaccination started in October of 2009. In most countries, by the time vaccination started, the second wave of ...pandemic H1N1 2009 was already under way. With limited supplies of vaccine, we are left to question whether it may be a good strategy to vaccinate the high-transmission groups earlier in the epidemic, but it might be a better use of resources to protect instead the high-risk groups later in the epidemic. To answer this question, we develop a deterministic epidemic model with two age-groups (children and adults) and further subdivide each age group in low and high risk.
We COMPARE optimal vaccination strategies started at various points in time in two different.
a population in a developed country where children account for 24% of the population, and a population in a less developed country where children make up the majority of the population, 55%. For each of these populations, we minimize mortality or hospitalizations and we find an optimal vaccination strategy that gives the best vaccine allocation given a starting vaccination time and vaccine coverage level. We find that population structure is an important factor in determining the optimal vaccine distribution. Moreover, the optimal policy is dynamic as there is a switch in the optimal vaccination strategy at some time point just before the peak of the epidemic. For instance, with 25% vaccine coverage, it is better to protect the high-transmission groups before this point, but it is optimal to protect the most vulnerable groups afterward.
Choosing the optimal strategy before or early in the epidemic makes an important difference in minimizing the number of influenza infections, and consequently the number of influenza deaths or hospitalizations, but the optimal strategy makes little difference after the peak.
Pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 (pandemic H1N1) is spreading throughout the planet. It has become the dominant strain in the Southern Hemisphere, where the influenza season has now ended. Here, on ...the basis of reported case clusters in the United States, we estimated the household secondary attack rate for pandemic H1N1 to be 27.3% 95% confidence interval (CI) from 12.2% to 50.5%. From a school outbreak, we estimated that a typical schoolchild infects 2.4 (95% CI from 1.8 to 3.2) other children within the school. We estimated the basic reproductive number, R₀, to range from 1.3 to 1.7 and the generation interval to range from 2.6 to 3.2 days. We used a simulation model to evaluate the effectiveness of vaccination strategies in the United States for fall 2009. If a vaccine were available soon enough, vaccination of children, followed by adults, reaching 70% overall coverage, in addition to high-risk and essential workforce groups, could mitigate a severe epidemic.
Vaccinating school-aged children against influenza can reduce age-specific and population-level illness attack rates. Using a stochastic simulation model of influenza transmission, the authors ...assessed strategies for vaccinating children in the United States, varying the vaccine type, coverage level, and reproductive number R (average number of secondary cases produced by a typical primary case). Results indicated that vaccinating children can substantially reduce population-level illness attack rates over a wide range of scenarios. The greatest absolute reduction in influenza illness cases per season occurred at R values ranging from 1.2 to 1.6 for a given vaccine coverage level. The indirect, total, and overall effects of vaccinating children were strong when transmission intensity was low to intermediate. The indirect effects declined rapidly as transmission intensity increased. In a mild influenza season (R = 1.1), approximately 19 million influenza cases could be prevented by vaccinating 70% of children. At most, nearly 100 million cases of influenza illness could be prevented, depending on the proportion of children vaccinated and the transmission intensity. Given the current worldwide threat of novel influenza A (H1N1), with an estimated R of 1.4–1.6, health officials should consider strategies for vaccinating children against novel influenza A (H1N1) as well as seasonal influenza.
With new cases of avian influenza H5N1 (H5N1AV) arising frequently, the threat of a new influenza pandemic remains a challenge for public health. Several vaccines have been developed specifically ...targeting H5N1AV, but their production is limited and only a few million doses are readily available. Because there is an important time lag between the emergence of new pandemic strain and the development and distribution of a vaccine, shortage of vaccine is very likely at the beginning of a pandemic. We coupled a mathematical model with a genetic algorithm to optimally and dynamically distribute vaccine in a network of cities, connected by the airline transportation network. By minimizing the illness attack rate (i.e., the percentage of people in the population who become infected and ill), we focus on optimizing vaccine allocation in a network of 16 cities in Southeast Asia when only a few million doses are available. In our base case, we assume the vaccine is well-matched and vaccination occurs 5 to 10 days after the beginning of the epidemic. The effectiveness of all the vaccination strategies drops off as the timing is delayed or the vaccine is less well-matched. Under the best assumptions, optimal vaccination strategies substantially reduced the illness attack rate, with a maximal reduction in the attack rate of 85%. Furthermore, our results suggest that cooperative strategies where the resources are optimally distributed among the cities perform much better than the strategies where the vaccine is equally distributed among the network, yielding an illness attack rate 17% lower. We show that it is possible to significantly mitigate a more global epidemic with limited quantities of vaccine, provided that the vaccination campaign is extremely fast and it occurs within the first weeks of transmission.
Cholera was introduced into Haiti in 2010. Since then, more than 820 000 cases and nearly 10 000 deaths have been reported. Oral cholera vaccine (OCV) is safe and effective, but has not been seen as ...a primary tool for cholera elimination due to a limited period of protection and constrained supplies. Regionally, epidemic cholera is contained to the island of Hispaniola, and the lowest numbers of cases since the epidemic began were reported in 2019. Hence, Haiti may represent a unique opportunity to eliminate cholera with OCV.
In this modelling study, we assessed the probability of elimination, time to elimination, and percentage of cases averted with OCV campaign scenarios in Haiti through simulations from four modelling teams. For a 10-year period from January 19, 2019, to Jan 13, 2029, we compared a no vaccination scenario with five OCV campaign scenarios that differed in geographical scope, coverage, and rollout duration. Teams used weekly department-level reports of suspected cholera cases from the Haiti Ministry of Public Health and Population to calibrate the models and used common vaccine-related assumptions, but other model features were determined independently.
Among campaigns with the same vaccination coverage (70% fully vaccinated), the median probability of elimination after 5 years was 0-18% for no vaccination, 0-33% for 2-year campaigns focused in the two departments with the highest historical incidence, 0-72% for three-department campaigns, and 35-100% for nationwide campaigns. Two-department campaigns averted a median of 12-58% of infections, three-department campaigns averted 29-80% of infections, and national campaigns averted 58-95% of infections. Extending the national campaign to a 5-year rollout (compared to a 2-year rollout), reduced the probability of elimination to 0-95% and the proportion of cases averted to 37-86%.
Models suggest that the probability of achieving zero transmission of Vibrio cholerae in Haiti with current methods of control is low, and that bolder action is needed to promote elimination of cholera from the region. Large-scale cholera vaccination campaigns in Haiti would offer the opportunity to synchronise nationwide immunity, providing near-term population protection while improvements to water and sanitation promote long-term cholera elimination.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Global Good Fund, Institute for Disease Modeling, Swiss National Science Foundation, and US National Institutes of Health.
New strains of influenza spread around the globe via the movement of infected individuals. The global dynamics of influenza are complicated by different patterns of influenza seasonality in different ...regions of the world. We have released an open-source stochastic mathematical model of the spread of influenza across 321 major, strategically located cities of the world. Influenza is transmitted between cities via infected airline passengers. Seasonality is simulated by increasing the transmissibility in each city at the times of the year when influenza has been observed to be most prevalent. The spatiotemporal spread of pandemic influenza can be understood through clusters of global transmission and links between them, which we identify using the epidemic percolation network (EPN) of the model. We use the model to explain the observed global pattern of spread for pandemic influenza A(H1N1) 2009-2010 (pandemic H1N1 2009) and to examine possible global patterns of spread for future pandemics depending on the origin of pandemic spread, time of year of emergence, and basic reproductive number (). We also use the model to investigate the effectiveness of a plausible global distribution of vaccine for various pandemic scenarios. For pandemic H1N1 2009, we show that the biggest impact of vaccination was in the temperate northern hemisphere. For pandemics starting in the temperate northern hemisphere in May or April, vaccination would have little effect in the temperate southern hemisphere and a small effect in the tropics. With the increasing interconnectedness of the world's population, we must take a global view of infectious disease transmission. Our open-source, computationally simple model can help public health officials plan for the next pandemic as well as deal with interpandemic influenza.
In this paper, the authors provide estimates of 4 measures of vaccine efficacy for live, attenuated and inactivated influenza vaccine based on secondary analysis of 5 experimental influenza challenge ...studies in seronegative adults and community-based vaccine trials. The 4 vaccine efficacy measures are for susceptibility (VES), symptomatic illness given infection (VEP), infection and illness (VESP), and infectiousness (VEI). The authors also propose a combined (VEC) measure of the reduction in transmission in the entire population based on all of the above efficacy measures. Live influenza vaccine and inactivated vaccine provided similar protection against laboratory-confirmed infection (for live vaccine: VES = 41%, 95% confidence interval (CI): 15, 66; for inactivated vaccine: VES = 43%, 95% CI: 8, 79). Live vaccine had a higher efficacy for illness given infection (VEP = 67%, 95% CI: 24, 100) than inactivated vaccine (VEP = 29%, 95% CI: −19, 76), although the difference was not statistically significant. VESP for the live vaccine was higher than for the inactivated vaccine. VEI estimates were particularly low for these influenza vaccines. VESP and VEC can remain high for both vaccines, even when VEI is relatively low, as long as the other 2 measures of vaccine efficacy are relatively high.
Highlights • We modeled and evaluated two possible vaccination strategies for pandemic influenza. • The protection gained after a single dose is key in determining the best strategy. • A one-dose ...strategy is optimal if the protection gained after one dose is substantial. • A two-doses strategy is optimal if little protection is gained after a single dose. • We show how vaccination strategies can be integrated into pandemic control plans.
Highlights ► Influenza pandemics occur in epidemic waves. ► We use mathematical epidemiology to develop thresholds for subsequent epidemic waves. ► We combine the thresholds with known herd immunity ...to predict subsequent waves. ► For the 2009 influenza pandemic, we predicted the absence of the third wave in the US. ► For the 2009 influenza pandemic, we predicted the occurrence of the second wave in England.
Highlights • Adjuvanted vaccines provided the highest vaccine efficacy after 1 and 2 doses. • Vaccine efficacy of adjuvanted vaccines was 17% higher than unadjuvanted vaccines. • Proportion of ...overall maximum efficacy obtained after 1 dose of vaccine was computed. • This proportion ranged from 0.32 to 0.57 in adjuvanted vaccines.
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