Assessing the Role of Voluntary Self-Isolation in the Control of Pandemic Influenza Using a Household Epidemic Model

Qingxia Zhang and Dingcheng Wang
Additional contact information
Qingxia Zhang: School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 2006, Xiyuan Avenue, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu 611731, China
Dingcheng Wang: School of Mathematical Sciences, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, No. 2006, Xiyuan Avenue, West Hi-Tech Zone, Chengdu 611731, China

IJERPH, 2015, vol. 12, issue 8, 1-18

Abstract: In the absence of effective vaccines, antiviral drugs and personal protective measures, such as voluntary self-isolation, have been a part of preparedness plans for the next influenza pandemic. We used a household model to assess the effect of voluntary self-isolation on outbreak control when antiviral drugs are not provided sufficiently early. We found that the early initiation of voluntary self-isolation can overcome the negative effects caused by a delay in antiviral drug distribution when enough symptomatic individuals comply with home confinement at symptom onset. For example, for the baseline household reproduction number R H0 = 2:5, if delays of one or two days occur between clinical symptom development and the start of antiviral prophylaxis, then compliance rates of q ≥ 0:41 and q ≥ 0:6, respectively, are required to achieve the same level of effectiveness as starting antiviral prophylaxis at symptom onset. When the time to beginning voluntary self-isolation after symptom onset increases from zero to two days, this strategy has a limited effect on reducing the transmission of influenza; therefore, this strategy should be implemented as soon as possible. In addition, the effect of voluntary self-isolation decreases substantially with the proportion of asymptomatic infections increasing.

Keywords: mathematical modeling; pandemic influenza; voluntary self-isolation; antiviralprophylaxis; household reproduction number (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/8/9750/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/12/8/9750/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:12:y:2015:i:8:p:9750-9767:d:54340

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().