CommunityFlu

RESOURCE DESCRIPTION

CommunityFlu is a public planning tool for estimating the impact of an influenza pandemic on a simulated community with and without interventions. It estimates the impact of a variety of potential interventions (including vaccinations, school closures, use of face masks, and self-quarantine) on the total number of cases, deaths, and workdays lost. CommunityFlu is used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and others at the federal, state, and local level to support pandemic planning and preparedness activities. It is primarily intended to be used by state and local public health departments. It has also been used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for pandemic planning, and by universities for academic studies in public health. The primary outputs of CommunityFlu are the numbers of people who are ill with influenza at home, made outpatients, hospitalized, or dead, both with and without interventions. These outputs can be viewed in tables or line graphs. They can also be viewed by specific age groups (e.g., 0 to 18 years old). Additionally, CommunityFlu estimates the number of workdays lost due to personal illness or due to ill children. User inputs needed for CommunityFlu include the initial number of infectives, the pandemic duration (days), and parameters describing the interventions used (vaccines, face masks, school closures, and/or quarantine). CommunityFlu uses default assumptions for several parameters, but these can be customized. Customizable epidemiological parameters include the virus incubation and infectious periods; the number and duration of contacts in various settings; the probabilities of virus transmission, hospitalization, and death; and the total percentage of people removed from public gatherings. Customizable intervention parameters include the probability of pre-exposure vaccination and its effectiveness; the probability of mask use and its effectiveness; the cumulative incidence needed to close schools; the school closing length (days); and the percentage of the population that will be quarantined and for how long. In addition to using population data derived from US Census data, custom population distributions may also be used. Custom population inputs required are percent population by age group and percent population in each household size.

BROAD DATA CATEGORIES

• Disease surveillance

SPECIFIC DATA ELEMENTS

• Disease outbreak (natural)
• Flu