Evaluating targeted COVID-19 vaccination strategies with agent-based modeling
Fig 2
Individual interactions and behaviors in the model.
Interactions occur when people in the model are in the same location at the same time, and may occur in households, workplaces, schools, hospitals, and long-term care facilities (not shown). Households have an inherent risk tolerance (indicated by color), and probabilistically have inter-household connections homophilously based on that tolerance. The population overall has a time-varying perception of risk of COVID-19 infection that may be different from the actual risk. (a) When the societal perception of risk is lower than a household’s risk tolerance, household members engage in all their normal activities, including socializing with specific other households and patronizing specific high-transmission-risk workplaces like restaurants and bars. (b) When the societal perception of risk exceeds a given household’s risk tolerance, the household will cease high-risk activities (indicated with greyed arrows), while maintaining more essential activities like going to work, school, and patronizing low risk workplaces (e.g., grocery stores). (c, d) Employees and patrons interact in some workplace types, with interactions between employees more likely to result in transmission. (d) When perceived risk is high, risk-intolerant (blue) employees of high-transmission-hazard workplaces still go to work, while risk-intolerant patrons stop visiting these locations (and thus are grayed-out).