Are we prepared for the next influenza pandemic? Lessons from modelling different preparedness policies against four pandemic scenarios

Publication date: Available online 4 May 2019Source: Journal of Theoretical BiologyAuthor(s): Jasmina Panovska-Griffiths, Luca Grieco, Edwin van Leeuwen, Marc Baguelin, Richard Pebody, Martin UtleyAbstractIn the event of a novel influenza strain that is markedly different to the current strains circulating in humans, the population have little/no immunity and infection spreads quickly causing a global pandemic. Over the past century, there have been four major influenza pandemics: the 1918 pandemic (“Spanish Flu”), the 1957-58 pandemic (the “Asian Flu”), the 1967-68 pandemic (the “Hong Kong Flu”) and the 2009 pandemic (the “Swine flu”). To inform planning against future pandemics, this paper investigates how different is the net-present value of employing pre-purchase and responsive- purchased vaccine programmes in presence and absence of anti-viral drugs to scenarios that resemble these historic influenza pandemics. Using the existing literature and in discussions with policy decision makers in the UK, we first characterised the four past influenza pandemics by their transmissibility and infection-severity. For these combinations of parameters, we then projected the net-present value of employing pre-purchase vaccine (PPV) and responsive-purchase vaccine (RPV) programmes in presence and absence of anti-viral drugs. To differentiate between PPV and RPV policies, we changed the vaccine effectiveness value and the time to when the vaccine is first available. Our...
Source: Journal of Theoretical Biology - Category: Biology Source Type: research