Vaccination Schedule under Conditions of Limited Vaccine Production Rate

A decision support system for scheduling a vaccination campaign during a pandemic emergency: The COVID-19 case

This paper considers the organization and scheduling of a vaccination campaign during a pandemic emergency. We describe the decision process and introduce an optimization model, which showed a powerful multi-scenario tool for scheduling a campaign in detail within a dynamic and uncertain context. The solution of the model gave the decision maker the possibility to test different settings and have a configurable solution within few seconds, compared with the man-days of effort that would have required a manual schedule. Analysis of a real case study on COVID-19 vaccination campaign in northern Italy showed that the use of such optimized solution allowed to cover the target population within a much shorter time interval, compared to a manual approach.

The Effect of Priority Access of Dentists to COVID-19 Vaccination in the Czech Republic

The lack of vaccines in the first half of 2021 led to the need to prioritize access to vaccination. This approach has been associated with a number of issues, including ethics and effectiveness. However, analyses providing data on this topic are scarce. This work describes the effect of a priority approach to vaccination on the different development of the pandemic between Czech dentists and the Czech general population. The dentist-related data were obtained from survey studies published in 2021 and 2022, and the Czech general population data were mined from the Our World in Data online database. The analysis shows that until the beginning of vaccination, i.e., in December 2020, the prevalence of laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 infection among dentists was higher than in the general population by 22.5% (8.65% vs. 6.70%). This trend was reversed already in the first month after the start of vaccination, and the difference increased every month. Finally, in June 2021, priority vaccination statistically significantly (p < 0.0001) reduced the resulting prevalence among dentists (12.67%) compared to the general population (15.55%), which is a difference of 18.5%. This represents a prevalence shift between the populations by 40% during 6 months of priority vaccination. The results support the conclusion that the priority vaccination of healthcare workers was not only ethical but also rational and effective.