A 'small-world-like' model for comparing interventions aimed at preventing and controlling influenza pandemics

Abstract

Background: With an influenza pandemic seemingly imminent, we constructed a model simulating the spread of influenza within the community, in order to test the impact of various interventions.

Choosing pandemic parameters for pandemic preparedness planning: A comparison of pandemic scenarios prior to and following the influenza A(H1N1) 2009 pandemic

“…Eventually 18 articles were included for the first search, as displayed in Fig. 1 [7,[10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26].…”

“…Ten of the eleven models fall within a range of 1.0-2.0 days; only one study uses a shorter period (Fig. 5) [18]. Concerning pre-2009 parameters, of the six studies that include the latent period and incubation period, all but two assume both period lengths to be equal [12,15].…”

“…However, the majority of the values estimated for the incubation and latent period for the influenza A(H1N1) 2009, fall within the ranges of the pre-2009 studies or closely match the ranges. The infectious period ranges from 1.5 to 4.1 days in eight modelling studies describing pre-2009 parameters, when not including the study by Carrat et al who state it to be less than ten days but not what the mean period length is [18]. One study states it to be 1.5 days, based on the literature [21], and another states it to be 1.6 days, due to calibration to equal a certain generation time [25].…”

The Effect of Time Distribution Shape on a Complex Epidemic Model

“…The choice is rather arbitrary, but a discussion is certainly necessary to justify the choice. Times with single point distributions are sometimes considered a reasonable approximation (Carrat et al, 2006;Kaplan et al, 2003), but offer no real advantages in terms of simplification as far as we can see.…”

Pandemic Influenza, Reopening Schools, and Returning to Work

“…First, almost all models that simulate individual person-to-person infl uenza transmission use 1 or 2 databases that record the probability of infl uenza transmission. One database was recorded in the early 1970s in Tecumseh, Michigan (4), and the other among ≈400 households across France (5). Is it reasonable to use these estimates to simulate infl uenza transmission in every community, town, city, and metropolis in the United States?…”