Math Problem: What's The Best Strategy For COVID-19 Vaccination?

Only a vaccine will save America from the COVID -19 pandemic. At least that's the opinion of nearly all public health officials.

Obviously, vaccine manufacturers are critical to any vaccine campaign. But there's another group that plays a less obvious but still crucial role in making sure vaccines do what they're intended: mathematicians.

Even if the Biden administration releases all available doses of the two authorized COVID-19 vaccines, for a while at least, supplies will remain limited. How best to use that limited supply is a question mathematicians can help answer.

"Mathematical models are very, very useful to guide policy," says Laura Matrajt, a builder of mathematical models at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. They can help with decisions about who gets the vaccine first when supplies are limited.