Projected Impact of Vaccination Timing and Dose Availability on the Course of the 2014 West African Ebola Epidemic

Discussion While trials of vaccine for Ebola virus are ongoing, and consequently the estimates presented above are imprecise, our analysis offers four important qualitative results regarding vaccination as a tool for the control of the Ebola epidemic that may be helpful to manufacturers, governments, and health organizations: We estimate that current non-vaccine interventions are reducing the reproductive number of Ebola in West Africa, even in the absence of large numbers of immune individuals. The final size of this epidemic is projected to be ~ 1% of the regional population. This means that reductions in reproductive number are unlikely to be due to large numbers of immune individuals, which in turn makes vaccination a highly attractive intervention to help control this epidemic. While our estimates are by necessity imprecise, we can project that the availability of > 3 million highly efficacious vaccine doses by January 2015 could substantially reduce final size if these could be provided to individuals in a timely way. We do not minimize the challenges this will pose to vaccine distribution, not least of which may be cold chain in a resource-poor part of the world. However, we also note that the ability to immunize care providers themselves could facilitate a large scale increase in the availability of both local and international volunteers and staff. The timing of vaccine administration is key to an impactful vaccine program. To date our projections of the course...
Source: PLOS Currents Outbreaks - Category: Epidemiology Authors: Source Type: research