Unit files

Unit files are the reference for the published version of NUVA.

There is one Unit file for each NUVA concept of vaccine or valence, allowing for individual tracking of their changes in the GitHub history of files.

All other representations of NUVA are derived from the Unit files by the GitHub automated processes. When needed, they also fetch information from the language files and alignment files.

Unit files are using the YAML format, intended to be easily interpreted both by humans and by machines. THey are named VACxxxx.yml for Vaccine units or VALxxx.yml for Valence units.

Vaccine units

Vaccine units exist with two structures, depending upon whether they correspond to abstract vaccines, that are described by enumerating their valences, or to real and deprecated vaccines, that are described as an instance of a given abstract vaccine.

Abstract vaccines

Abstract vaccines are characterized by:

A type set to ‘abstract’.
A label describing the concept.
An optional comment for further information.
A list valences of the identifiers of the included valences.
Dates when the concept was createdor last modfied.

Example: VAC0610.yml

type: abstract
label: Tdap - Diphtheria-Tetanus-Pertussis vaccine, low dose, unspecified
comment: Diphtheria toxoid (low dose), tetanus toxoid and pertussis (multicomponent
  acellular, low dose) vaccine
created: '2021-07-19'
modified: '2025-05-20'
valences:
- VAL017
- VAL034
- VAL067

Real and deprecated vaccines

Real vaccines are characterized by:

A type set to ‘real’ or ‘deprecated’.
A label corresponding to the brand name.
An optional comment for further information.
An instanceOf attribute expressing to which abstract vaccine is associated this real one.
Dates when the concept was createdor last modfied.

Example: VAC0182.yml

type: real
label: ADACEL
created: '2021-07-19'
modified: '2026-09-13'
instanceOf: VAC0610

Valence units

Valences are characterized by:

A label describing the valence
A shorthand notation corresponding to the usual representation of the valence, such as ap for “acellular pertussis, reduced dose”.
A vtypestring representing the valence type.
The identifier of the parent valence.
Dates when the concept was createdor last modfied.

Example : VAL017.yml

label: Pertussis valence, acellular, reduced dose
created: '2021-07-19'
modified: '2025-04-29'
shorthand: ap
vtype: '0'
parent: VAL117