WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind., May 4 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists say they have created a program that simulates the spread of pandemic flu and how it can be reduced by using drugs and social-distancing.
"Visualizing how specific actions would help to control the spread of a flu pandemic is very valuable to public health officials," said Purdue University Professor David Ebert, who led the research.
"The idea is to help officials make decisions in terms of when to use stockpiles of anti-viral drugs, when to close schools and issue media alerts for social-distancing measures."
The program, called PanViz, was developed in collaboration with Pacific Northwest National Laboratories and is based on published epidemiology literature and data from the 1918 flu pandemic. The visualization demonstrates how certain actions affect the availability of hospital beds, the percentage of ill people and the percentage of deaths.
"This tool does not provide a prediction, but a scientifically based simulation for showing the relative benefit of implementing different actions," Ebert said. "We do not have sufficient data to begin to predict the spread and impact, but given enough statistics, the model used in the tool will be more predictive."
A video explaining the program is available at http://pixel.ecn.purdue.edu:8080/~rmacieje/PanViz_Video.avi.
