Modeling influenza pandemic and interventions edited by: Rino
Rappuoli, Giuseppe Giudice Modeling is an important aspect of
pandemic preparedness, and different approaches have been
conducted to date. The epidemic dynamics and the assessment of
containment or mitigation strategies, such as vaccination,
border restriction, antiviral treatment of cases and prophylaxis
of household or school/workplace contacts of index cases can be
predicted by employing classical compartmental models
[susceptible, exposed but not yet infectious, infectious,
recovered and no longer susceptible (SEIR), possibly with age
and/or geographic component]. Other authors have implemented the
evaluation of realistic, individually targeted, public health
intervention strategies that requires highly detailed models,
such as the individual based model (IBM). According to the
predictive models used, an influenza pandemic would spread
worldwide over a period of 2–7 months, depending on the basic
reproductive number (a measure on how many peopl