Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America
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To inform planning for an influenza pandemic, we estimated US demand for N95 filtering facepiece respirators (respirators) by healthcare and emergency services personnel and need for surgical masks by pandemic patients seeking care. ⋯ Assuming that 20% to 30% of the population would become ill, 1.7 to 3.5 billion respirators would be needed in the base case scenario, 2.6 to 4.3 billion in the intermediate demand scenario, and up to 7.3 billion in the maximum demand scenario (for all scenarios, between 0.1 and 0.4 billion surgical masks would be required for patients). For pandemics with a lower attack rate and fewer cases (eg, 2009-like pandemic), the number of respirators needed would be higher because the pandemic would have longer duration. Providing these numbers of respirators and surgical masks represents a logistic challenge for US public health agencies. Public health officials must urgently consider alternative use strategies for respirators and surgical masks during a pandemic that may vary from current practices.
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Following the detection of a novel influenza strain A(H7N9), we modeled the use of antiviral treatment in the United States to mitigate severe disease across a range of hypothetical pandemic scenarios. Our outcomes were total demand for antiviral (neuraminidase inhibitor) treatment and the number of hospitalizations and deaths averted. ⋯ However, distribution logistics were not examined and should be addressed in future work. Treatment was estimated to avert many severe outcomes (5200-248,000 deaths; 4800-504,000 hospitalizations); however, large numbers remained (25,000-425,000 deaths; 580,000-3,700,000 hospitalizations), suggesting that the impact of combinations of interventions should be examined.