WHO vaccination protocol can be improved to save more lives [post]

Marcelo Moret, Tarcisio Rocha Filho, José Mendes, Thiago Murari, Aloísio Nascimento Filho, Antônio Cordeiro, Walter Ramalho, Fulvio Scorza, Antonio-Carlos Almeida
2021 unpublished
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, a virus infection caused by the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus, has impacted all countries of the world, and the main 2021's challenge is clearly vaccinating the greater number of persons, in the shortest time span, for a maximal reduction in the number of deaths and in the significant economic impacts. Large-scale vaccination aimed to achieve herd immunity poses many logistic and social difficulties [1], with
more » ... erent vaccine candidates and designs [2,3], and vaccination priorities will determine the evolution of the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper we explicitly propose an alternative vaccination protocol that can be more effective than those already being deployed, as the ones in the European Union [4] and in the United States [5]. We report strong evidence based on an epidemiological model for the importance of contact hubs (or superspreaders), having a much larger average number of contacts than in the rest of the population [6-11], on the effectiveness of the vaccination strategy. We show that carefully choosing who will be in the first group to be vaccinated can significantly impact on both health services demand and total death toll, by increasing the overall numbers of lives saved and of hospitalizations. We argue that the approach here considered, which does not coincide with current proposals, and given the current conditions with a lack of basic resources for proper vaccination in several countries, and with a significant reduction in mobility and social isolation restrictions, should be considered by all authorities participating in the design of COVID-19 vaccination with the intent of maximising the number of human lives saved.
doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-148826/v1 fatcat:xvx36epn2bcntps4rm2xbglxq4