The InfluSim Project

Travel restrictions would generally have very little effect on delaying or preventing pandemic influenza viruses from spreading to new countries. But some places with a very small number of travelers per year, like for example some small islands in the Pacific or Caribbean, may have a chance to escape a pandemic, if they impose travel volume restrictions. This applet computes the escape probability for a remote place given a set of assumptions about the natural history of the disease, travel behaviour and border control. A publication describing the modeling and results for Pacific Island countries has been submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

QuickFlu was originally released in 2007 and has since been used for educational purposes, to illustrate the effect of some interventions on the effective reproduction rate of pandemic influenza.