Time-dependent vaccine efficacy estimation quantified by a mathematical model (original) (raw)

Vaccine Efficacy at a Point in Time

2021

Vaccine trials are generally designed to assess efficacy on clinical disease. The vaccine effect on infection, while important both as a proxy for transmission and to describe a vaccine’s total effects, requires frequent longitudinal sampling to capture all infections. Such sampling may not always be feasible. A logistically easy approach is to collect a sample to test for infection at a regularly scheduled visit. Such point or cross-sectional sampling does not permit estimation of classic vaccine effiacy on infection, as long duration infections are sampled with higher probability. Building on work by Rinta-Kokko and others (2009) we evaluate proxies of the vaccine effect on transmission at a point in time; the vaccine efficacy on prevalent infection and on prevalent viral load, VEPI and VEPV L, respectively. Longer infections with higher viral loads should have more transmission potential and prevalent vaccine efficacy naturally captures this aspect. We apply a proportional hazard...

Measuring the efficacy of a vaccine during an epidemic

2023

The vaccine rush caused by the current pandemic has led to performing fast clinical trials; in particular, we have observed a wide range of reported efficacy for the different vaccines from phase III cohort studies. We show that we show that when performing large cohorts phase III clinical trials near the epidemic peak, the measured effectiveness represents a strong underestimate of the vaccine efficacy even in absence of confounding factors. In particular, we show that the underestimation grows with the fraction of infectious individuals present in the population during the experiment and with the severity of the epidemic measured by its basic reproduction number.

Analysis of Key Factors of a SARS-CoV-2 Vaccination Program: A Mathematical Modeling Approach

Epidemiologia

The administration of vaccines against the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) started in early December of 2020. Currently, there are only a few approved vaccines, each with different efficacies and mechanisms of action. Moreover, vaccination programs in different regions may vary due to differences in implementation, for instance, simply the availability of the vaccine. In this article, we study the impact of the pace of vaccination and the intrinsic efficacy of the vaccine on prevalence, hospitalizations, and deaths related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Then we study different potential scenarios regarding the burden of the COVID-19 pandemic in the near future. We construct a compartmental mathematical model and use computational methodologies to study these different scenarios. Thus, we are able to identify some key factors to reach the aims of the vaccination programs. We use some metrics related to the outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic in order to assess the impact of the efficacy ...

Analysis of Delayed Vaccination Regimens: A Mathematical Modeling Approach

Epidemiologia, 2021

The first round of vaccination against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) began in early December of 2020 in a few countries. There are several vaccines, and each has a different efficacy and mechanism of action. Several countries, for example, the United Kingdom and the USA, have been able to develop consistent vaccination programs where a great percentage of the population has been vaccinated (May 2021). However, in other countries, a low percentage of the population has been vaccinated due to constraints related to vaccine supply and distribution capacity. Countries such as the USA and the UK have implemented different vaccination strategies, and some scholars have been debating the optimal strategy for vaccine campaigns. This problem is complex due to the great number of variables that affect the relevant outcomes. In this article, we study the impact of different vaccination regimens on main health outcomes such as deaths, hospitalizations, and the number of infected. We devel...

Estimation of the time-dependent vaccine efficacy from a measles epidemic

Statistics in Medicine, 2002

We present a method to estimate the time-dependent vaccine efficacy from the cohort-specific vaccination coverage and from data on the vaccination status of cases and apply it to a measles epidemic in Germany which involved 529 cases, 88 of whom were vaccinated and 370 unvaccinated (for the remaining 71 cases the vaccination status is unknown). Our epidemiological model takes into account that maternal antibodies prevent successful vaccination and that vaccine immunity may be lost over time. Model parameters are estimated from the data using maximum likelihood. Vaccination coverage, as determined in school surveys, ranged from 27.6 per cent for the cohort born in 1974 to 85 per cent for the 1986 cohort, which is far too low to prevent measles transmission. Cohorts for which no school surveys were performed are omitted from analysis. Thus, sufficient data are available for only 282 cases, 69 of whom are vaccinated. According to our estimates, measles vaccinations provided no immunity before 1978 (95 per cent CI: 0 to 47 per cent), for the period 1978-1982, the estimated vaccine efficacy was 80per cent (95 per cent CI: 67 to 89 per cent), and for 1982–1990 it was 97 per cent (95 per cent CI: 93 to 99 per cent). After 1990, the estimated value dropped to 89 per cent, but its confidence interval widely overlaps with that of the previous period (95 per cent CI: 74 to 97 per cent). Loss of immunity was estimated to be zero (95 per cent CI: 0 to 0.003/year). Several sensitivity analyses were performed with respect to the model assumptions. A modified model which assumed constant efficacy at all vaccination times yielded a high estimate of 96 per cent (95 per cent CI: 92 to 98 per cent) for primary vaccine efficacy but also a high loss rate of immunity of 0.007/year (95 per cent CI: 0.001 to 0.012) to explain the high fraction of vaccinated cases among older individuals. The likelihood score value is however significantly inferior compared to the score value of the model with time-dependent vaccine efficacy. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

An sveir model for assessing potential impact of an imperfect anti-sars vaccine

2006

The control of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), a fatal contagious viral disease that spread to over 32 countries in 2003, was based on quarantine of latently infected individuals and isolation of individuals with clinical symptoms of SARS. Owing to the recent ongoing clinical trials of some candidate anti-SARS vaccines, this study aims to assess, via mathematical modelling, the potential impact of a SARS vaccine, assumed to be imperfect, in curtailing future outbreaks. A relatively simple deterministic model is designed for this purpose. It is shown, using Lyapunov function theory and the theory of compound matrices, that the dynamics of the model are determined by a certain threshold quantity known as the control reproduction number (Rv). If Rv ≤ 1, the disease will be eliminated from the community; whereas an epidemic occurs if Rv > 1. This study further shows that an imperfect SARS vaccine with infection-blocking efficacy is always beneficial in reducing disease spread within the community, although its overall impact increases with increasing efficacy and coverage. In particular, it is shown that the fraction of individuals vaccinated at steady-state and vaccine efficacy play equal roles in reducing disease burden, and the vaccine must have efficacy of at least 75% to lead to effective control of SARS (assuming R 0 = 4). Numerical simulations are used to explore the severity of outbreaks when Rv > 1. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. 92D30.

Assessing the best time interval between doses in a two-dose vaccination regimen to reduce the number of deaths in an ongoing epidemic of SARS-CoV-2

PLOS Computational Biology

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a major concern all over the world and, as vaccines became available at the end of 2020, optimal vaccination strategies were subjected to intense investigation. Considering their critical role in reducing disease burden, the increasing demand outpacing production, and that most currently approved vaccines follow a two-dose regimen, the cost-effectiveness of delaying the second dose to increment the coverage of the population receiving the first dose is often debated. Finding the best solution is complex due to the trade-off between vaccinating more people with lower level of protection and guaranteeing higher protection to a fewer number of individuals. Here we present a novel extended age-structured SEIR mathematical model that includes a two-dose vaccination schedule with a between-doses delay modelled through delay differential equations and linear optimization of vaccination rates. By maintaining the minimum stock of vaccines under a given production r...

Assessing optimal time between doses in two-dose vaccination regimen in an ongoing epidemic of SARS-CoV-2

2021

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is a major concern all over the world and, as vaccines became available at the end of 2020, optimal vaccination strategies were subjected to intense investigation. Considering their critical role in reducing disease burden, the increasing demand outpacing production, and that most currently approved vaccines follow a two-dose regimen, the cost-effectiveness of delaying the second dose to increment the coverage of the population receiving the first dose is often debated. Finding the best solution is complex due to the trade-off between vaccinating more people with lower level of protection and guaranteeing higher protection to a fewer number of individuals.Here we present a novel extended age-structured SEIR mathematical model that includes a two-dose vaccination schedule with a between-doses delay modelled through delay differential equations and linear optimization of vaccination rates. Simulations for each time window and for different types of vaccines and...

The importance of time post-vaccination in determining the decrease in vaccine efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern

2021

With the development of high-efficacy vaccines against SARS-CoV-2, an urgent open question is whether currently available vaccines protect with similar efficacy against infection with SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern (VOC). Recent reports quantifying the extent by which VOC can evade vaccine immunity resulted in a range of estimates for the same VOC, which makes them difficult to interpret. One possible explanation for the discrepancies between different studies is an inconsistency in terms of the time post-vaccination of the sampled population. Here we present a model based on the observed correlation between antibody neutralization levels and vaccine efficacy, which demonstrates the impact of time post-vaccination on the comparison of the vaccine efficacy for VOC versus non-VOC infections. Our model predicts and exemplifies several possible consequences for vaccine efficacy in VOC infections: 1) a delay in the onset of vaccine efficacy against VOC; 2) a transient increase in suscept...