Math model to predict COVID-19 vaccine efficacy

  • IASbaba
  • March 6, 2022
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Math model to predict COVID-19 vaccine efficacy

Part of: Prelims and GS-III Science and Technology

Context: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Science and Queensland Brain Institute in Australia have developed a mathematical model that predicts how antibodies generated by COVID-19 vaccines confer protection against symptomatic infections.

Key findings

  • Several vaccines offer a high degree of protection, with some reducing the number of symptomatic infections by over 95% in clinical trials.
  • The model developed by the team was able to predict the level of protection that would be available after vaccination based on the antibody ‘profile’ of the individual.
  • The predictions were found to closely match efficacies reported in clinical trials for all the major approved vaccines.
  • The researchers also observed that vaccine efficacy was linked to a readily measurable metric called antibody neutralisation titre.
    • This opens up the possibility of using such models to test future vaccines for their efficacy before elaborate clinical trials are launched..
  • This formalism is yet to be applied to the new variants, including Omicron.

Do you know?

  • The reason predicting vaccine efficacies has been hard is that the processes involved are complex and operate at many interconnected levels.
  • Vaccines trigger a number of different antibodies, each affecting virus growth in the body differently.
  • This, in turn, affects the dynamics of the infection and the severity of the associated symptoms.
  • Further, different individuals generate different collections of antibodies and in different amounts.

News Source: TH

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