| More Supply of Flu Drugs required to control Pandemic |
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The most effective way to control a flu pandemic is to isolate sick people at home and rapidly treat them and their household contacts with antiviral drugs, and to close schools and businesses, say epidemiologists.
A new mathematical model is used by the epidemiologist Neil Ferguson and colleagues at Imperial College London to simulate pandemics in the UK and US under various conditions to find the effect of various government interventions.
According to the new mathematical model, a variety of measures such as quarantining the affected people and treating their family members with antiviral drugs will sharply reduce new infections in a future flu pandemic. The model which published in the British scientific journal Nature described that the check on travel would make little difference but school closures would help when combined with household quarantine and giving antiviral medication to contacts of flu patients.
However, this approach would require twice as much medicine as the government has instructed, but this could hew the disease rate by half, and if a vaccine were available, even one that was not very effective, sickness rates could be cut by two-thirds, the research found.
The principal author Neil Ferguson, who teaches in the department of infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, said, "We’re trying to look at things you can do," he further informed that his model, and another by the Los Alamos National Laboratory published earlier this month, were "unrivaled in their detail."
Whereas the UK government has ordered 14.6m treatment courses of Tamiflu - the anti-flu drug, made by Roche of Switzerland, enough for about 25 per cent of the population, the Imperial College computer simulation shows 30m doses would be required for effective intervention.
Prof Neil Ferguson, who headed the research and is a key Government adviser, said: "There is no single magic bullet which can control a flu pandemic, but a combination of interventions could be highly effective, potentially saving many lives."
The modeling shows that the Government must also develop ways for officials to learn which households have flu symptoms so the drug can be delivered the same day. "GPs will be overwhelmed by severely ill people. One thing being considered is roaming teams to deliver drugs to any house where there has been a case."
The research shows that border restrictions are improbably to delay the spread of acute flu by more than a few weeks unless they are more than 99 per cent effective. The modeling revealed that the sixth-month wait for enough vaccine to cope with a pandemic strain is too long. The epidemic outbreak of influenza would peak within two to three months of the first case and be over within four months. "Speed of response is therefore essential", says Prof Ferguson.
Speaking at the launch of a report on measures to punch the threat from infectious diseases in people, animals and plants over the next 10-25 years, Sir David King-the government chief scientist said ministers would take account of the paper by Professor Ferguson, who advises them on epidemiology.
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