Safe reopening of university campuses is possible with COVID-19 vaccination.

PLoS One

School of Operations Research and Information Engineering, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, United States of America.

Published: July 2022

We construct an agent-based SEIR model to simulate COVID-19 spread at a 16000-student mostly non-residential urban university during the Fall 2021 Semester. We find that mRNA vaccine coverage at 100% combined with weekly screening testing of 25% of the campus population make it possible to safely reopen to in-person instruction. Our simulations exhibit a right-skew for total infections over the semester that becomes more pronounced with less vaccine coverage, less vaccine effectiveness and no additional preventative measures. This suggests that high levels of infection are not exceedingly rare with campus social connections the main transmission route. Finally, we find that if vaccine coverage is 100% and vaccine effectiveness is above 80%, then a safe reopening is possible even without facemask use. This models possible future scenarios with high coverage of additional "booster" doses of COVID-19 vaccines.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9302728PMC
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0270106PLOS

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

vaccine coverage
12
safe reopening
8
coverage 100%
8
vaccine effectiveness
8
vaccine
5
reopening university
4
university campuses
4
campuses covid-19
4
covid-19 vaccination
4
vaccination construct
4

Similar Publications

Background: In December 2020, Canada began its coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine rollout campaign. Canadians were vaccinated with differing time intervals between doses, vaccine products and vaccine schedules, based on age, timing of vaccination and jurisdiction. The objective of this study is to describe the epidemiology and association between the incidence of COVID-19 cases following vaccination, time since completion of primary series, time between doses and/or product combination and probability of developing severe outcomes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!