The University of Hong Kong announced Tuesday a research result
saying that quarantine and medical treatment can largely reduce
primary symptomatic attack rate of influenza.
A research team from the Medicine School of the university has
developed a mathematical model of influenza transmission within and
between households to estimate the expected reduction in primary
attack rates for different household-based interventions.
Based on a range of parameters such as the distribution of
household sizes, epidemiological data from Hong Kong and some other
data, the model was used to calculate the effects of interventions
on the spread of pandemic influenza, including: household-based
quarantine; isolation of actively infected individuals outside the
household; targeted use of anti-virals.
Researchers found that even if only 50 percent of the population
were to comply with public health interventions, the proportion
infected during the first year of an influenza pandemic could be
substantially reduced by a combination of household-based
quarantine, isolation of infected individuals outside the
household, and targeted use of anti-virals.
Based on an influenza-associated mortality rate of 1.05 percent
among those infected with symptoms, the magnitude of the predicted
benefit of the above three interventions would be a reduction from
49 percent to 27 percent in the proportion of the population who
become ill with symptoms in the first year of the pandemic, which
would correspond to 16,000 fewer deaths in a city the size of Hong
Kong.
Anti-viral treatment appeared to be about as effective as
isolation when each was used in combination with household
quarantine, but would require stockpiling 3.9 doses of anti-viral
for each member of the population, equivalent to about 27 million
doses in total for Hong Kong.
The research has been fast tracked for expedited publication on
Tuesday in the international medical journal PLoS Medicine.
(Xinhua News Agency August 9, 2006)