英国发现限制飞机航班不能阻断流感传播

 
 
根据一项最新研究发现，限制来自流感严重爆发国家的空中旅行，并不能够防止感染的传播。

英国健康防护署感染中心(HPA, London, UK)的研究人员，研发了一个异质群种模型，该模型由一系列相互关联的动力学流行传播模型组成，使用了目前已知的流感病毒传播信息，特别是1968-1969年期间全球范围内流感大流行的资料。联系来自国际航空运输协会(IATA, Montreal, Canada)2002年在105个城市之间的资料进行估计，包括100个最高的国际旅客 数量和所有的1968-1969流行期间的所有52个航班资料。根据数学模型设计，在一台计算机上进行了疾病流行的虚拟实验。研究人员试图寻找病毒如何从一个城市传播到另外一个城市，以及旅行限制是否能够减少传播率。

研究人员得出结论说空中旅行的限制所起到的作用甚小。这或许是因为，与其它病毒相比较，流感病毒在人之间传播速度非常之快，而且会影响大多数人。一旦流行爆发，限制感染城市的航班，只有在发现流行之后所有城市之间的旅行被杜绝，才能有效的延缓世界范围内的大流行。这些研究结果发表在2006年6月期的《PLoS医学》之上。
 
Restricting Air Travel Cannot Stop Flu Pandemic
 
By medinews.com staff writers
Posted on 22 May 2006 
 
Restricting air travel from countries where there is a serious influenza outbreak will do little to hold back the spread of the infection, according to the findings of a new study.

Researchers at the Center for Infections, Health Protection Agency (HPA, London, UK), developed a metapopulation model that consists of a set of coupled dynamic epidemic transmission models, using information already available about how flu viruses spread, particularly information recorded during the worldwide flu outbreak in 1968-1969. Coupling between cities was estimated by using data for 2002 received from the International Air Transport Association (IATA, Montreal, Canada) on flights between 105 cities, including the 100 with the highest number of international scheduled passengers and all 52 flights used in the 1968-1969 outbreak. With the mathematical model devised, virtual experiments were carried out by simulating worldwide outbreaks on a computer. The researchers looked at how the virus might spread from one city to another and how travel restrictions might reduce the rate of spread.

The researchers concluded that restrictions on air travel would achieve very little. This is probably because, compared with some other viruses, the flu virus is transmitted from one person to another very quickly and affects many people. Once a major outbreak is under way, banning flights from affected cities would be effective at significantly delaying worldwide spread only if almost all travel between cities could be stopped almost as soon as an outbreak was detected in each city. The results were published in the June 2006 issue of PLoS Medicine.