  During the Covid-19 pandemic a key role is played by vaccination to combat
the virus. There are many possible policies for prioritizing vaccines, and
different criteria for optimization: minimize death, time to herd immunity,
functioning of the health system. Using an age-structured population
compartmental finite-dimensional optimal control model, our results suggest
that the eldest to youngest vaccination policy is optimal to minimize deaths.
Our model includes the possible infection of vaccinated populations. We apply
our model to real-life data from the US Census for New Jersey and Florida,
which have a significantly different population structure. We also provide
various estimates of the number of lives saved by optimizing the vaccine
schedule and compared to no vaccination.
