Journal of theoretical biology
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In the event of a novel influenza strain that is markedly different to the current strains circulating in humans, the population have little/no immunity and infection spreads quickly causing a global pandemic. Over the past century, there have been four major influenza pandemics: the 1918 pandemic ("Spanish Flu"), the 1957-58 pandemic (the "Asian Flu"), the 1967-68 pandemic (the "Hong Kong Flu") and the 2009 pandemic (the "Swine flu"). To inform planning against future pandemics, this paper investigates how different is the net-present value of employing pre-purchase and responsive- purchased vaccine programmes in presence and absence of anti-viral drugs to scenarios that resemble these historic influenza pandemics. ⋯ When comparing the two vaccine programmes, the RPV policy allowed a longer timeframe and lower coverage to attain the same benefit as the PPV policy. Our findings suggest that responsive-purchase vaccination policy has a bigger window of positive net-present value when employed against each of the historic influenza pandemic strains but needs to be rapidly available to maximise benefit. This is important for future planning as it suggests that future preparedness policies may wish to consider utilising timely (i.e. responsive-purchased) vaccines against emerging influenza pandemics.