{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,12]],"date-time":"2026-02-12T08:14:48Z","timestamp":1770884088099,"version":"3.50.1"},"reference-count":32,"publisher":"Public Library of Science (PLoS)","issue":"9","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,6]],"date-time":"2022-09-06T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1662422400000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"http:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100000865","name":"Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","award":["INV-016017"],"award-info":[{"award-number":["INV-016017"]}],"id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100000865","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["www.ploscompbiol.org"],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":["PLoS Comput Biol"],"abstract":"<jats:sec id=\"sec001\">\n<jats:title>Background<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>Based on the principles of equity and effectiveness, the World Health Organization and COVAX formulate vaccine allocation as a mathematical optimization problem. This study aims to solve the optimization problem using agent-based simulations.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec002\">\n<jats:title>Methods<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>We built open-sourced agent-based models to simulate virus transition among a demographically representative sample of 198 million people in 148 countries using advanced computational services. <jats:italic>All countries continuing their current vaccine progress<\/jats:italic> is defined as the baseline scenario. Comparison scenarios include achieving minimum vaccination rates and allocating vaccines based on pandemic levels.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec003\">\n<jats:title>Findings<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The simulations are fitted using the pandemic data from 148 countries from January 2020 to June 2021. Under the baseline scenario, the world will add 24.36 million cases and 468,945 deaths during the projection period of three months. Inoculating at least 10%, 20%, and 26% of populations in all countries requires 1.12, 3.31, and 5.00 million additional vaccine doses every day, respectively. Achieving these benchmarks reduces new cases by 0.56, 2.74, and 3.32 million, respectively. If allocated by the current global distribution, 5.00 million additional vaccine doses will only avert 1.45 million new cases. If those 5.00 million vaccines are allocated based on projected cases in each country, the averted cases will increase more than six-fold to 9.20 million. Similar differences between allocation methods are observed in averted deaths.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>\n<jats:sec id=\"sec004\">\n<jats:title>Conclusion<\/jats:title>\n<jats:p>The global distribution of COVID-19 vaccines can be optimized to achieve better outcomes in terms of both equity and effectiveness. Alternative vaccine allocation methods may avert several times more cases and deaths than the current global distribution. With reasonable requirements on additional vaccines, COVAX could adopt alternative allocation strategies that reduce cross-country inequity and save more lives.<\/jats:p>\n<\/jats:sec>","DOI":"10.1371\/journal.pcbi.1010463","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,6]],"date-time":"2022-09-06T17:27:01Z","timestamp":1662485221000},"page":"e1010463","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1371\/journal.pcbi.corrections_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":22,"title":["Optimizing global COVID-19 vaccine allocation: An agent-based computational model of 148 countries"],"prefix":"10.1371","volume":"18","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6390-6921","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Qingfeng","family":"Li","sequence":"first","affiliation":[]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-4025-1536","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Yajing","family":"Huang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[]}],"member":"340","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2022,9,6]]},"reference":[{"key":"pcbi.1010463.ref001","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"533","DOI":"10.1016\/S1473-3099(20)30120-1","article-title":"An interactive web-based dashboard to track COVID-19 in real time","volume":"20","author":"E Dong","year":"2020","journal-title":"Lancet Infect Dis"},{"key":"pcbi.1010463.ref002","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"261","DOI":"10.3947\/ic.2021.0029","article-title":"Which Group Should be Vaccinated First?: A Systematic Review","volume":"53","author":"EB Noh","year":"2021","journal-title":"Infect Chemother"},{"key":"pcbi.1010463.ref003","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","first-page":"739","DOI":"10.1038\/s41591-021-01288-8","article-title":"The battle for COVID-19 vaccines highlights the need for a new global governance mechanism","volume":"27","author":"AM Ekstr\u00f6m","year":"2021","journal-title":"Nature Medicine"},{"key":"pcbi.1010463.ref004","unstructured":"Fair allocation mechanism for COVID-19 vaccines through the COVAX facility. 2020. 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