Benefits of integrated screening and vaccination for infection control

Rabil, Marie Jeanne; Tunc, Sait; Bish, Douglas R.; Bish, Ebru K.

Benefits of integrated screening and vaccination for infection control

dc.contributor.author	Rabil, Marie Jeanne	en
dc.contributor.author	Tunc, Sait	en
dc.contributor.author	Bish, Douglas R.	en
dc.contributor.author	Bish, Ebru K.	en
dc.date.accessioned	2022-05-06T12:17:20Z	en
dc.date.available	2022-05-06T12:17:20Z	en
dc.date.issued	2022-04-21	en
dc.description.abstract	Importance: Screening and vaccination are essential in the fight against infectious diseases, but need to be integrated and customized based on community and disease characteristics. Objective: To develop effective screening and vaccination strategies, customized for a college campus, to reduce COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations, deaths, and peak hospitalizations. Design, setting, and participants: We construct a compartmental model of disease spread under vaccination and routine screening, and study the efficacy of four mitigation strategies (routine screening only, vaccination only, vaccination with partial or full routine screening), and a no-intervention strategy. The study setting is a hypothetical college campus of 5,000 students and 455 faculty members during the Fall 2021 academic semester, when the Delta variant was the predominant strain. For sensitivity analysis, we vary the screening frequency, daily vaccination rate, initial vaccine coverage, and screening and vaccination compliance; and consider scenarios that represent low/medium/high transmission and test efficacy. Model parameters come from publicly available or published sources. Results: With low initial vaccine coverage (30% in our study), even aggressive vaccination and screening result in a high number of infections: 1,020 to 2,040 (1,530 to 2,480) with routine daily (every other day) screening of the unvaccinated; 280 to 900 with daily screening extended to the newly vaccinated in base- and worst-case scenarios, which respectively consider reproduction numbers of 4.75 and 6.75 for the Delta variant. Conclusion: Integrated vaccination and routine screening can allow for a safe opening of a college when both the vaccine effectiveness and the initial vaccine coverage are sufficiently high. The interventions need to be customized considering the initial vaccine coverage, estimated compliance, screening and vaccination capacity, disease transmission and adverse outcome rates, and the number of infections/peak hospitalizations the college is willing to tolerate.	en
dc.description.version	Published version	en
dc.format.mimetype	application/pdf	en
dc.identifier.doi	https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0267388	en
dc.identifier.issue	4	en
dc.identifier.uri	http://hdl.handle.net/10919/109818	en
dc.identifier.volume	17	en
dc.language.iso	en	en
dc.publisher	PLOS	en
dc.rights	Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International	en
dc.rights.uri	http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/	en
dc.subject	Vaccination	en
dc.subject	Immunization	en
dc.subject	Virus testing	en
dc.subject	COVID-19	en
dc.subject	College campuses	en
dc.title	Benefits of integrated screening and vaccination for infection control	en
dc.title.serial	PLoS ONE	en
dc.type	Article - Refereed	en
dc.type.dcmitype	Text	en