Scientists evaluate how effective Covid vaccine needs to be to stop pandemic

August 26, 2020 12:23

Using a computer simulation model, scientists in the US have assessed the effectiveness and coverage levels a potential COVID-19 vaccine needs to have in order to completely extinguish the disease spread, an advance that may help shape expectations for policy makers.

The study, published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, evaluated the impact of introducing a vaccine in the US with varying abilities to protect against infection without other measures, such as social distancing, in place.

According to the scientists, including those from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy in the US, the overall goal of the research was to identify the vaccine efficacy thresholds above which vaccination could prevent a wave of the epidemic, or extinguish an ongoing epidemic. They assumed a range of possible scenarios to carry out the simulation rather than predict exactly what will happen with the current pandemic.

"The aim was to represent the spectrum of possibilities if social distancing measures were relaxed completely," the researchers wrote in the study. If only 60 percent of the population gets vaccinated, the study noted that the efficacy of the vaccine should be around 80 per cent to prevent an epidemic, and 100 per cent to extinguish an ongoing epidemic. The simulation experiments carried out by the scientists revealed that to prevent an epidemic, the vaccine efficacy has to be at least 60 per cent when the immunisation coverage is 100 per cent. -- PTI

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