Modelling the spread of pandemic influenza and strategies for its containment and mitigation

Objective

The public heath threat posed by novel strains of influenza A gaining transmissibility in people and causing a human pandemic has been recognised as potentially catastrophic, especially since the emergence and global spread of the highly pathogenic avian H5N1 virus. Several mathematical models have been developed to evaluate patterns of spatio-temporal spread of infection, and the effectiveness of various containment strategies. However, these require significant improvements, elaboration, and application, in order to better inform EU-wide policy and responses. Key to the determination of the spatio-temporal patterns of pandemic influenza are data on contact patterns, such as those that are being acquired by the EU projects INFTRANS and POLYMOD. Building on these projects, we will collect detailed data on population structure, workplace sizes, and population movement; while also doing new surveys focused on identifying potential behavioral super-spreaders, and attitudes towards, and potential behavioural changes during, a pandemic. A suite of mathematical models, ranging from deterministic and stochastic differential equations to individual-based microsimulations, will be developed and integrated; taking into account all of the new data that is acquired above. The models will be validated against data on past pandemics and on the dynamics of seasonal and endemic infectious diseases. The effectiveness of control/treatment strategies, including measures to increase social distance (school and workplaces closure, travel reductions), quarantine, antiviral prophylaxis and mass or targeted vaccination, which also consider contact tracing protocols, will be evaluated through these models. An essential ingredient to the usefulness of detailed models is the possibility of updating them on the basis of new information or on the patterns of an emerging epidemic; hence a specific effort will be devoted to develop modular and efficient algorithms allowing for real-time analysis.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

• medical and health sciences health sciences public health epidemiology pandemics

Keywords

Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)

• containment strategies
• mathematical models
• pandemic influenza

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

• FP7-HEALTH - Specific Programme "Cooperation": Health

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

• HEALTH-2007-2.3.3-6 - Development of pandemic influenza containment and mitigation strategies

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-HEALTH-2007-A
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

CP-FP - Small or medium-scale focused research project

Coordinator

Participants (10)