Strict isolation of households is among the tactics touted by scientists in a new study on how to combat a bird flu pandemic.
The study recommends rapid treatment and quarantine of not only infected people but also their uninfected household contacts. Travel restrictions, school closures, and vaccines were also studied to estimate their effectiveness in mitigating an avian influenza pandemic.
The results are reported in tomorrow's issue of the journal Nature.
The study is one of a series examining potential pandemic-fighting strategies and is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland. (Read about another study in the series: "U.S. Not Ready for Fast-Spreading Bird Flu, Study Says.")
Jeremy Berg, director of the institute, said the development of several models for a flu pandemic is similar to the use of several models to forecast the weather.
"When the National Hurricane Center is predicting where a hurricane might hit land, they run lots of different models, and only once they start coming up with a similar answer do you get confidence they might know what's going on," he said.
The models "are not a substitute for policy development in any sense," Berg added. "They inform policymakers in ways that are hard to do without them."
The current study, he said, is particularly useful when looking at the impact of multiple tactics.
(Photos: The Next Killer Flu.)
Cocktail Ingredients
In addition to rapid treatment with antiviral drugs and isolation of entire households, the study recommends coupling the treatments with early closure of schools hit by the outbreak.
This would reduce disease rates by nearly half, according to the models.
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