Policies for biodefense revisited: the prioritized vaccination process for Smallpox
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Authors
Kress, Moshe
Subjects
Vaccination
Smallpox
Bioterrorism
Terrorism
Prevention
Smallpox
Bioterrorism
Terrorism
Prevention
Advisors
Date of Issue
2003
Date
2003
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
Handling bioterror events that involve contagious agents is a major concern in the war against terror, and is a cause for debate among policymakers about the best response policy. At the core of this debate stands the question which of the two post-event policies to adopt: mass vaccination-where maximum vaccination capacity is utilized to uniformly inoculate the entire population, or trace (also called ring or targeted) vaccination-where mass vaccination capabilities are traded off with tracing capabilities to selectively inoculate only contacts (or suspected contacts) of infective individuals. We present a dynamic epidemic-intervention model that expands previous models by capturing some additional key features of the situation and by generalizing some assumptions regarding the probability distributions of inter-temporal parameters. The model comprises a set of difference equations. The model is implemented to analyze alternative response policies. It is shown that a mixture of mass and trace vaccination policies-the prioritized vaccination policy-is more effective than either of the two aforementioned policies.
Type
Technical Report
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Operations Research
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
NPS-OR-03-008
Sponsors
Funder
Format
4, 30 p.: ill. (some col.);28 cm.
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.