TORONTO, June 20 (UPI) -- An outbreak of seasonal influenza was stopped in its tracks by treating Taiwan school children with anti-viral medication, researchers said this week.
"After we realized we had a cluster of influenza cases, we initiated treatment with oseltamivir -- Roche's Tamiflu -- and we had no more cases at the school," said Ih-Jen Su, distinguished investigator at the National Health Research Institutes in Taiwan.
After 17 high school students came down with influenza-type illness, anti-viral medication was given to school children and household members of the sick children. The outbreak abruptly ended without any other cases developing.
In his presentation at the Options for the Control of Influenza VI conference in Toronto, Su also showed that, in another school where health officials assumed the influenza-like illness was caused by bacteria and not a virus, the outbreak continued until treatment with anti-virals was begun a week -- and more sick children -- later.
Su said the anti-virals used to short-circuit the outbreaks were taken from a government stockpile of oseltamivir. The stockpile had been created as a guard against an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and also as a hedge against an influenza pandemic outbreak.
Taiwan government policy is to use the stockpile of anti-virals should a cluster of more than three cases of influenza-like illness occur, whether it was flu or SARS causing the illness.
"The benefit of combined use of anti-virals and public health measures -- such as closing schools during influenza clusters -- was effective in blocking transmission of seasonal influenza in an institutional outbreak," Su reported.
