Professor Lewi Stone and his colleagues at the Department of Life Sciences of Tel Aviv University (TAU) are creating a statistical tool which they believe has the power to macro- and micro-manage pandemic influenza outbreaks.

Good data can make all the difference in controlling A/H1N1 influenza which spreads across the world, Israel National News reported on its website on Friday.

According to the report, the secret weapon of the team is the most extensive database in the world dealing with influenza outbreaks.

"We've accessed a veritable gold mine of data, collected over 10 years in Israel by a large network of hospital and medical clinics," said Stone. "It gives us a country-wide picture of what a seasonal flu is like and how much worse it would be if there were a A/H1N1 pandemic."

The team believes that their approach -- a set of modeling tools modular in design -- will be successful.

One reason is their impressive data set. Another is the modular way the model is conceived: The models are complicated when the existing data is good, simpler when key variables are missing.

"Based on our study of influenza outbreaks in Israel," said Dr. Amit Huppert of the Gertner Institute at Israel's Tel Hashomer Hospital, who is collaborating on the research, "we can estimate the rate at which the virus spreads in towns with a very young population. These communities are especially at risk. Communities in the U.S. with a high population of children can be advised to stock up on anti-virals."

"It's taken a lot of work to remove the 'noise' from the data set in a careful way," said Stone. Some doctors misclassified other respiratory illnesses as the flu, or perpetrated other doctors' reporting errors.

The TAU researchers also took into account that the A/H1N1 will attack more people than an annual seasonal flu, because most people have only limited immunity to the new virus.

These factors are worked into the model so that communities, hospitals and bodies like the UN or the Center for Disease Control can make better decisions in planning.

Stone believes that the world has not yet seen the worst of the A/H1N1.

"The pandemic, if it's like the previous one, will come in waves," he said. "The first wave is the weaker one and rather wimpy. It's not very dangerous. We still have to brace ourselves for the worst."

"Our model provides guidance for complex decisions such as whether to close airports, schools and travel routes, and how to distribute Tamiflu," he continued. "It could be applied to very small populations as well as populations as large as 6 to 10 million people and more."

Funded by Epiwork, a European Union project, the TAU team hopes to have a commercial version of the model available in three years.

The new TAU model might also be used to understand bio-terror attacks, should such a catastrophic event take place.

(Xinhua News Agency July 12, 2009)