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The Current State of Non-Viral Vector–Based mRNA Medicine Using Various Nanotechnology Applications
Published in Yashwant V. Pathak, Gene Delivery Systems, 2022
Kshama Patel, Preetam Dasika, Yashwant V. Pathak
The purpose of any kind of immunization treatment is to have as many people as possible retain the qualities of resilience against infection, leading to herd immunity. Herd immunity is when the majority of a community expresses immunity to a disease, making transmission more unlikely and protecting those who do not have total immunity as well.16 One primary advantage of using a non-viral vector in immunotherapy is a higher transduction efficiency than if a retrovirus was used.16 In addition to this, cell division is not needed for transduction to occur in a non-viral vector, since it becomes effective as soon as it transfects into the cytoplasm of immune cells.16 This is the opposite with viral vectors, which need to transfect into the nucleus to transduct and have enough expression to trigger an immune response.16 However, one big drawback of a non-viral vector for immunization is that the duration of expression is notably shorter than with viral templates that have a higher level of integration with the genome of the test individual (which is also a risk).16 Generally, the benefits outweigh the drawbacks for non-viral vectorization through mRNA immunotherapy to achieve herd immunity, in that it is mostly safer, cheaper, and more effective in certain cases (propagation, etc.).
Epidemiology-Based Models for Information Spread
Published in Michael Muhlmeyer, Shaurya Agarwal, Information Spread in a Social Media Age, 2021
Michael Muhlmeyer, Shaurya Agarwal
There are two main ways in which an epidemic curve is flattened. The first method is by lowering the connectedness factor, k. In other words, lessen the strength of direct contact between individuals within a population. It is usually achieved through “social distancing” measures meant to keep people from close physical proximity to each other or reduce the number of people allowed to patronize a business simultaneously. The second method is to reduce the number of susceptible people within a group. This can be accomplished through extreme lock-down orders or vaccinations (if available). By reducing the number of susceptible people, fewer can become infectious at once, allowing time for recovery and a gradual move toward herd immunity protection. It was observed worldwide during the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
AI and Immunology Considerations in Pandemics and SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19
Published in Louis J. Catania, AI for Immunology, 2021
The concept of herd immunity is an epidemiological formula in which a sufficient amount of people are immunized or vaccinated against a pathogen, thus reducing the rate of infection throughout the population. The vaccination levels must produce a threshold called the “R-Naught” or RO (The SIR [‘susceptible-infectious-recovered’]) formulation, a factor that determines the transmissibility of the pathogen. It denotes the average number of secondary cases of an infectious disease that one case would generate in a completely susceptible population. That is, when one infected person infects greater than one other person, a potential exponential increase in infections results leading to an epidemic or pandemic. If, however, transmission on average remains below an RO of one person, this will result in a decreasing spread in infection and eventually into a majority of the population (an estimated 60%–70% needed) to produce “herd immunity.”48
Designing an efficient vaccine supply chain network using a two-phase optimization approach: a case study of COVID-19 vaccine
Published in International Journal of Systems Science: Operations & Logistics, 2023
Farhad Habibi, Alireza Abbasi, Ripon Kumar Chakrabortty
The population groups are ranked after calculating their weights using this method. The readers are referred to Appendix A, where the detailed information regarding this technique is discussed, and Chang (1996) as the primary reference. This process is also discussed using the case study data in Section 6. Set the time horizon for vaccinating the groups: After prioritizing population groups, a time horizon should be set for vaccination of all categories. The length of the time horizon entirely depends on government policies, so that the shorter the time horizon, the faster herd immunity is achieved. Herd immunity is defined as the indirect protection from disease received by susceptible people when a population has a significant enough percentage of immune individuals (Sinha et al., 2021). Although societies make their efforts to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible, accelerating the vaccination process depends on vaccine production and supply capacity. It is usually accompanied by increasing costs since this situation requires the production and distribution of more vaccines in a shorter period of time; consequently, more capacity and investment are needed. Hence, governments usually strike a balance between the time to achieve herd immunity and vaccination supply costs.
The impact of vaccination on the dynamics of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2
Published in Waves in Random and Complex Media, 2023
Mahmoud H. DarAssi, Muhammad Altaf Khan, Mohammad Y. Alshahrani, Muath Suliman
It is obvious that vaccination of every individual in a specific country is quite difficult, and also the less developed and developing countries in the world cannot afford it. Therefore, the herd immunity threshold can be used in order to determine which percentage of the population can be vaccinated in order to reduce future infected cases. People with underlying health concerns, pregnant women, and those who choose not to be vaccinated for reasons such as traditional or otherwise should not be vaccinated. Vaccinating patients in the first two categories, in particular, may make their situation worse. The minimum amount of community-wide immunity necessary to shield those who cannot receive vaccinations from infection is determined using the idea of herd immunity. Herd immunity, then, is the term used to describe the indirect protection that members of a community experience when a sizable section of the population has acquired immunity to an infectious disease as a result of vaccination or spontaneous recovery from infection. Vaccination continues to be the fastest and safest way to build herd immunity for diseases that can be prevented by vaccines.
A Reactive Power Reserve Constrained Optimum Reactive Power Dispatch Using Coronavirus Herd Immunity Optimizer
Published in Electric Power Components and Systems, 2022
The Coronavirus Herd Immunity Optimizer (CHIO) is a human-based optimization algorithm, inspired from ‘the concept of herd immunity’ to handle the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. It is developed by Al-Betar [63] in August 2020. Herd immunity is a state where the majority of the population is immune from being infected (either through vaccination or natural infection), and this leads to the prevention of the disease. A Herd comprises of three types of individuals: susceptible, infected, and immune. The individuals who are yet to get infected by the virus are called ‘susceptible’, while those carrying the virus (or recovered) are called ‘infected’ (or ‘immune’). The infection spreading rate depends on the interactions between the individuals in the Herd. To protect susceptible individuals, the social distancing protocol is recommended by health experts.