LAUSR

Vaccination remains a critical element in the eventual solution to COVID-19 public health crisis. Many vaccines are already being mass produced and supplied to the population. However, the COVID-19 vaccination programme will be the biggest in history. Reaching herd immunity will require an unprecedented mass immunisation campaign that will take several months and millions of dollars. Using different network models, COVID-19 pandemic dynamics of different countries can be recapitulated such as in Italy. Stochastic computational simulations highlight that peak epidemic sizes in a population strongly depends on the social network structure. Assuming a vaccine efficacy of at least 80% in a mass vaccination program, at least 70%of a given pop ulation should be vaccinated to obtain herd immunity, independently of the social structure. If the vaccine efficacy reports lower levels of efficacy in practice, then the coverage of vaccine tion would be needed to be even higher. Simulations suggest that the “Ring of Vaccination” strategy, vaccinating susceptible contact and contact of contacts, would prevent new waves of COVID -19 meanwhile a high percent of the population is vaccinated.