ATLANTA — The Global Health Crisis Coordination Center (GHC3), with technical support from Microsoft, has developed the Priority-based use of Allocated Vaccines Estimator (PAVE) to aid state and county public health professionals achieve equitable allocation of limited vaccine supply across the U.S., as soon as safe and effective vaccines — approved following rigorous regulatory review — become available.

When a number of vaccine doses is distributed to states and counties, the tool aids in equitably calculating the vaccine quantities required at state and county levels for a range of priority populations (from highest to lowest risk). PAVE includes a variety of models, such as that included in a framework recently released by the National Academy of Medicine, another from the CDC COVID immunization “playbook,” as well as the anticipated guidelines from CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). In addition to supporting these published allocation models, the tool also enables users to adjust priority ranking of categories, and create custom models for allocation based upon on local population data often not available from published national data sources, and adjust assumptions of vaccine acceptability and uptake by people within each priority category. Especially early on, the amount of vaccine doses will be too small to immunize everyone at risk. The approach is designed to facilitate planning and optimal local decision making by state and county health officials to achieve equitable and optimal use of vaccines consistent with local priorities, driven by the most up-to-date community data available.

GHC3 benefited from the input of numerous stakeholders including county and state health officials, CDC, and experts working in academia and at non-profit organizations, who participated in discussions and demonstrations during the development of this tool. We are grateful for the expertise provided by Microsoft and Reprivata, critical to the technical quality of the current tool and to future versions to incorporate anticipated feedback from users.

“Getting to optimal and equitable use of safe and effective COVID19 vaccines will not be easy but must be accomplished to save lives and maximize societal benefits,” said Dr. Robert Breiman, Chief Scientific Officer, Global Health Crisis Coordination Center.

The PAVE tool will be made available next week to public health professionals. For more information please contact PAVE@globalhealthc3.org.