TY - JOUR
T1 - Determine Vaccination Priority in a Population of Partially Overlapping Groups
AU - Gou , Wei
AU - Peng , Xiaolong
AU - Li , Jianquan
AU - Lou , Jie
AU - Zhang , Fengqin
AU - Jin , Zhen
JO - CSIAM Transactions  on Life Sciences
VL - 3
SP - 506
EP - 521
PY - 2025
DA - 2025/10
SN - 1
DO - http://doi.org/10.4208/csiam-ls.SO-2025-0011
UR - https://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/csiam-ls/24513.html
KW - Vaccination priority, overlap matrix, basic reproduction number, multi-group epidemic model.
AB - <p style="text-align: justify;">Personal diverse interests and many group interactions naturally create partially overlapping groups within a population. Those who belong to multiple groups play a crucial role in spreading of infectious diseases across the whole population. We develop an algorithm to decompose the microscopic overlap structure of groups with representing a population of partially overlapping groups as a hypergraph of partially overlapping hyperedges, and characterize it using a newly defined overlap matrix. We formulate a specific multi-group SIR epidemic model, and address a one-time preventive vaccine allocation problem aimed at effectively reducing the basic reproduction number. By leveraging perturbation theory, we derive a principled ranking index to measure the vaccination priority of different groups, and establish a ranking vaccination strategy, which usually outperforms random vaccination strategies as verified by a series of numerical examples. These results offer a theoretical foundation for public health decision-making to develop effective vaccination allocation plans.</p>