Pandemic Flu Model for British

Bird flu could infect 26 million
Wednesday, 13th December 2006, 08:45
Category: Healthy LivingBird flu could kill almost one million and spread to 26 million Britons in the worst case scenario, a new model has predicted.

The report published by the Journal of The Royal Society Interface warns a pandemic could hospitalise 13 million people and says there is an "urgent need for preparedness and co-ordinated global strategies", labelling the projections "alarming".

A collaboration between Harvard, Los Alamos and Manitoba university, the study claims countries should not concentrate on medicines to combat bird flu because there are not enough anti-viral drugs, designed to suppress the illness, and it would take six months to develop a vaccine that would immunise the population.

The authors say their model shows that simply by isolating bird flu sufferers and reducing human contact, deaths could substantially be reduced.

While it predicts 933,514 deaths, 26 million infections and 13 million patients over the course of a pandemic, when transmission control methods, such as quarantine and isolation are entered into the equation, the number of predicted deaths slump to 660,215.

The number of people infected would drop to 18 million and the number in hospital would be 9.1 million.

However the UK also has stocks of anti-viral drugs, that would be given to treat people with bird flu symptoms, as well as to their relatives to try and prevent the disease spreading.

At its most efficient, the model predicts this would mean just three people would die in a pandemic, although this is highly unlikely.

This week, new figures revealed that Britain had one of the worst MRSA infection rates in the country, casting doubts on how well infection control measures could work in hospitals.

The figure also relies on three quarters of the population having access to anti-viral drugs, whereas Britain is building a stockpile for just 20 per cent of the population.

However, one of the authors, Miriam Nuno, a researcher at Harvard, said the country was dealing with the threat well compared to America.

She said: "It is very apparent that the US is hoping to get enough vaccines to mass-vaccinate the whole population, but the likelihood of that happening is slim.

"Right now the vaccine would take six months to develop, so we need to focus on interventions that do not rely on a vaccine.

"If you carry out very strict measures, you can reduce people to people contact. Hospitals would quarantine patients and many would not go to hospital, but self-isolate - it is about keeping infected people away from others.

"Other simple things could be that people don't go into the office, but work from home."

Ms Nuno said the UK was on the right course of action, but said the real victims of a pandemic could be those in the third world who have little or no stockpiles of antiviral drugs and little hope of getting a vaccine before it is gobbled up by the West.

She continued: "The truth is that all Western countries will get the vaccine first, but a pandemic would be a global problem and we need to work together.

"With many developing countries, all they will be able to do is enforce transmission control measures."

Ms Nuno added that the advantage of the new model was that any country could use it to help form a strategy to combat bird flu because it did not need complex data to make its predictions.

She said: "A lot of the current worked has relied on large simulation models that need precise information, whereas our model just requires demographic data, so it is quite simple for anyone to use."

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