Photo by V. Miller
Nov. 8, 2006
Responding to a Smallpox Outbreak
A Pox on You? A Study of the Effectiveness of the CDC's Response Plans to a Smallpox Outbreak
Ian Douglas Cummings, 17, Ogden, Utah
Finalist, Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, 2006
Category: Medicine
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has plans that offer various possible responses to an outbreak of the deadly, contagious disease called smallpox. These responses include calling for a lockdown of the affected population, starting an immunization program, and quarantining people in the early stages of the disease.
The effectiveness of such plans can't be tested with real people. So, Ian created a computer model that would enable him to test the effectiveness of the various responses proposed by the CDC.
Using his computer simulation, Ian tested the responses on a virtual population of 300 people, 30 of whom were smallpox carriers. He let his program run for the equivalent of 1 year. The program tracked the number of people who became ill, died, and survived as well as those who were unaffected by the disease.
Ian tested four scenarios: a government-imposed lockdown with varying levels of compliance; an immunization program vaccinating 0.6 percent, 3.3 percent, and 8.3 percent of the population each day; quarantining people who exhibited the early symptoms of smallpox; and quarantining people who exhibited later symptoms of the disease. He also ran his simulation to see what would happen if there were no government response to the outbreak.
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| Photo by V. Miller |
Ian found that the most effective response would be to quarantine people at the early stages of smallpox. A lockdown would also be effective if everyone obeyed it. He concluded that the most effective and reasonable strategy would be an enforced quarantine of people in the later stages of smallpox combined with an attempt to vaccinate individuals who had not been infected.
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