Estimating the value of containment strategies in delaying the arrival time of an influenza pandemic: A case study of travel restriction and patient isolation

TL;DR

This study uses a phenomenological metapopulation model to compare travel restrictions and patient isolation in delaying influenza pandemic arrival, highlighting the importance of response time in intervention effectiveness.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model to evaluate and compare the effectiveness of inter- and intra-population containment strategies for influenza pandemics.

Findings

Patient isolation outperforms travel restrictions with quick response.

Effectiveness of intra-population strategies decreases with increased response time.

Timely implementation is crucial for containment success.

Abstract

With a simple phenomenological metapopulation model, which characterizes the invasion process of an influenza pandemic from a source to a subpopulation at risk, we compare the efficiency of inter- and intra-population interventions in delaying the arrival of an influenza pandemic. We take travel restriction and patient isolation as examples, since in reality they are typical control measures implemented at the inter- and intra-population levels, respectively. We find that the intra-population interventions, e.g., patient isolation, perform better than the inter-population strategies such as travel restriction if the response time is small. However, intra-population strategies are sensitive to the increase of the response time, which might be inevitable due to socioeconomic reasons in practice and will largely discount the efficiency.