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Outbreaks in long-term care facilities during an influenza pandemic can only be mitigated but not prevented

lwang14 - Posted on 01 April 2016

Project Description: 

Introduction: Long term care facilities (LTCFs) provide residential care for elderly who have lost their abilities to live independently. A high proportion of LTCF residents are high-risk for severe complications if infected with influenza due to their chronic illnesses and old age. Recent modeling studies presented conflicting conclusions on whether outbreaks in LTCF can be prevented during an influenza pandemic. Our aim is to resolve these inconsistencies by evaluating the performance of a diverse set of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions for LTCF.

Researcher name: 
Lin Wang
Researcher position: 
Postdoctoral Fellow
Researcher department: 
School of Public Health
Researcher email: 
lwang14@hku.hk
Researcher name: 
Zoie S.Y. Wilkins-Wong
Researcher position: 
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Researcher department: 
School of Public Health and Community Medicine
Researcher email: 
zoie.wong@unsw.edu.au
Researcher name: 
Joseph T. Wu
Researcher position: 
Associate Professor
Researcher department: 
School of Public Health
Researcher email: 
joewu@hku.hk
Research Project Details
Project Duration: 
01/2016 to 12/2016
Project Significance: 
Protecting LTCF residents from pandemic influenza is an important component of pandemic preparedness and response, because they typically have higher severity (e.g. higher chance of hospitalization and ICU admission) and require more healthcare resources if infected (e.g. longer period of hospitalization). Our project output will be valuable in improving the guidance for influenza outbreak management in LTCFs.
Results Achieved: 
We have developed a stochastic individual-based transmission model to describe the transmission of pandemic influenza from general community to a LTCF via the commuting of healthcare works and the visiting of visitors. We will study the effects of (i) non-pharmaceutical interventions, including social distancing, hand-hygiene, and facemasks, etc. (ii) antiviral intervention and vaccination for healthcare workers (HCWs) and residents, and (iii) optimization of work shift and visitor policy to minimize viral introduction into the LTCF.
Remarks: 
We will evaluate the performance of a diverse set of pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical interventions, and we will consider a large set of parameters. The HPC will be very helpful in operating our simulations and analysis. We have implemented our programs using MPI, and used Intel compiler to compile the programs. We expect to use the HPC fourday account to do simulations.