Engineering and medical researchers at Penn have developed a groundbreaking framework that can determine the best and most computationally optimized distribution strategy for COVID-19 vaccinations in any given community. Published in PLOS One, this study addresses one of the most critical challenges in pandemic response – how to prioritize vaccination efforts in communities with individuals of different risk levels when supplies are scarce and the stakes are high.
The research team, comprised of Saswati Sarkar, Professor in Electrical and Systems Engineering (ESE), Shirin Saeedi Bidokhti, Assistant Professor in ESE, Harvey Rubin, a practicing physician at Penn Medicine and Professor of Infectious Diseases, and ESE doctoral student Raghu Arghal, designed their framework to be able to account for enough…