A model for optimizing the dispensing of vaccines during pandemics that uses a new measure of success for such efforts has been developed by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine, the Ithaca campus of Cornell University, Singapore University of Technology and Design and San Jose State University in California.

Individuals who were already pregnant at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic had a 50 percent lower exposure to SARS-CoV-2 compared with those who became pregnant after the pandemic began and the general population, according to a new model created by Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian and University of Oxford investigators. The findings, published Oct. 30 in the journal Viruses, are some of the most extensive data to support the common notion that protective shielding measures, including masking, social distancing and quarantining, conferred significant protection to pregnant individuals in the earliest months of the pandemic. New York City was the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. Public health authorities and medical professionals recommended shielding measures for protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection, especially for vulnerable populations—recommendations that continue today. While the effects of COVID-19 on pregnant individuals were not well understood at that time, it is now known that they have a higher risk of severe disease, ICU admission with mechanical ventilation and death from COVID-19. “While we can only infer that pregnant individuals were following public health recommendations and protecting themselves with shielding measures in the early months of the pandemic (since SARS-CoV-2 vaccines were not available yet), this is evidence that those protective measures against a largely unknown infectious disease threat were remarkably successful,” said co-author Dr. Nathaniel Hupert, an associate professor of population health sciences at Weill Cornell Medicine and an internist at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center. All pregnant people admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center to deliver babies in April 2020 received RT PCR testing, which analyzes nasal or oropharyngeal swab specimens to determine if an individual is infected with SARS-CoV-2. After initial studies showed that certain…

While the world has celebrated the arrival of highly effective vaccines against COVID-19, new work by researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine and the University of Oxford shows that even unrelated vaccines could help reduce the burden of the pandemic.

Mathematical modeling by Weill Cornell Medicine is helping to guide New York State and New York City leaders as they make decisions that could affect the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic.