Notice: Users may be experiencing issues with displaying some pages on stanfordhealthcare.org. We are working closely with our technical teams to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. Thank you for your patience.
 

Learn about the flu shot, COVID-19 vaccine, and our masking policy »

Stanford Health Care

A Perspective on the Role of Point-of-Care "Immuno-Triaging" to Optimize COVID-19 Vaccination Distribution in a Time of Scarcity. Frontiers in public health Zhang, Y., Rogers, A., Nadeau, K., Gu, J., Yang, S. 2021; 9: 638316

Abstract

Vaccine bears hope to bring COVID-19 pandemic under control. With limited supply, vaccines must be utilized efficiently to provide protection to those who need it most. Currently, no practical framework has been proposed to ensure fair vaccine allocation at individual level, which is a recognized problem. We propose here an evidence-based decision-making framework for COVID-19 vaccine appropriation that prioritizes vaccine doses to individuals based on their immunological status, or immuno-triaging. To ensure successful implementation of the proposed framework, point-of-care (POC) immunodiagnostic testing is needed to quickly ramp up the testing capability. Considerations for deploying POC immunodiagnostic testing at such a large scale are discussed. We hope that the proposed immunological decision-making framework for evidence-based COVID-19 vaccine appropriation provides an objective approach to ensure fair and efficient utilization of the scarce vaccine resource at the individual level that also maximizes the collective societal benefit.

View details for DOI 10.3389/fpubh.2021.638316

View details for PubMedID 34414149