A pandemic influenza simulation model for preparedness planning

Pandemic influenza continues to be a national and international public health concern that has received significant attention recently with the recent swine flu outbreak worldwide. Many countries have developed and updated their preparedness plans for pandemic influenza. School closure has been recommended as one of the best ways to protect children and indeed all susceptible individuals in a community during a possible disease outbreak. In this paper, we present a geospatial and temporal disease spread model for pandemic influenza affecting multiple communities. School closure, one of the social distancing policies, is investigated in this paper with several questions such as: at what level should schools be closed, for how long should they be kept closed, and how should be the re-opening decisions made. These questions are considered in terms of minimizing: the total infection cases, total mortalities, and the impact on educational services to school children.