Strategies for containing an influenza pandemic: the case of Italy

In this paper we introduce an individual based model for simulating the spread of an emerging influenza pandemic in Italy and testing the effectiveness of some containing strategies including vaccination, antiviral prophylaxis and quarantine measures to increase social distances. Our results show that while the probability of interrupting a large outbreak is negligible, a combination of the control measures can be effective in reducing the incidence of infection. In particular, in the worst case, an incidence reduction from about 50% to about 10% can be hopefully achieved