A new report out in Nature concludes that the U.S. is no position to slow down the spread of a flu pandemic that is likely to afflict one third of the population if it hits. And if the government quickly stockpiles antivirals, it can still only cut that figure to 28 percent. The bottom line: There is no silver bullet to protect people from a pandemic, according to the computer modeling done by the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College in London. Tamiflu and school closings may help slow the spread of a pandemic, say the researchers. But efforts to stop the spread of a pandemic into the U.S. is likely to only delay its arrival by a couple of weeks. The U.S. has enough medicine on hand to treat about 1.7 percent of the population, far below the 25 percent needed to blunt the impact of the disease.
- here's the CNN report [1]
Links:
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/conditions/04/26/preventing.pandemic.ap/