Optimal Vaccine Distribution Strategy for Different Age Groups of Population: A Differential Evolution Algorithm Approach

Vaccination is one of the effective ways for protecting susceptible individuals from infectious diseases. Different age groups of population have different vulnerability to the disease and different contact frequencies. In order to achieve the maximum effects, the distribution of vaccine doses to the groups of individuals needs to be optimized. In this paper, a differential evolution (DE) algorithm is proposed to address the problem. The performance of the proposed algorithm has been tested by a classical infectious disease transmission model and a series of simulations have been made. The results show that the proposed algorithm can always obtain the best vaccine distribution strategy which can minimize the number of infectious individuals during the epidemic outbreak. Furthermore, the effects of vaccination on different days and the vaccine coverage percentages have also been discussed.