COVID-19: Basis for Decision Making for Vaccination Strategy Presented

26.11.2020
Note: This is an automated translation (using DeepL) of the original German article.

The results of the research project Targeted COVID-19 Vaccination Strategies: An Agent-based Modeling Evaluation Considering Limited Vaccination Capacities (TAV-COVID), a cooperation of dwh GmbH with UMIT TIROL, TU Wien and DEXHELPP, were presented at a COVID-19 symposium at the John Hopkins University by Priv.-Doz. Dr. Beate Jahn and Univ.-Prof. Dr. Uwe Siebert (both Institute for Public Health, Medical Decision Making and Health Technology Assessment, UMIT).

Since limited vaccine availability must be expected in the beginning, the aim of the research project was to develop an evidence-based decision basis for the decision which groups of people should be treated with a COVID vaccine as a matter of priority, with the main focus on maximizing the overall benefit for the population.

The research group was advised by a Standing Policy and Expert Panel and international experts and jointly developed evidence statements for policy support in Austria.

TAV-COVID as a basis for further research

The results of this project also form the basis for a further research project of dwh GmbH: Concurrent Infectious Disease Simulation (CIDS), which is funded by the BMDW and BMK and administered by the FFG. This project is again carried out in cooperation with UMIT TIROL, TU Vienna and DEXHELPP.

Against the background of the upcoming influenza season, the goal of CIDS is to model and simulate the spread of COVID-19 diseases with respect to interactions with competing infectious diseases. This is done by a simulation-based analysis of this interaction based on the agent-based simulation model developed in the framework of DEXHELPP.


Note: More information and further literature on our work surrounding COVID-19 can be found on our COVID-19 project site.

Update 18.1.2021:

The project website of UMIT can be found here (in German) and the slides of the presentation are available for download (in German).