Closing schools in the event of a flu pandemic could help to slow the spread of the virus and limit the number of people affected, experts have said.
A new study published in the journal Nature suggests that one in seven cases of bird flu could be prevented if schools were closed for a prolonged period of time.
Experts at Imperial College London used computer modelling to determine how school closures would affect the spread of a theoretical H5N1 avian flu virus which had mutated to pass from human to human.
They found that school closures could prevent up to one in seven cases of flu, slow down the pandemic, and reduce the number of cases during the worst week of a theoretical outbreak by up to 40 per cent.
The findings support this non-pharmaceutical policy as a viable option to control the spread of a future flu pandemic, the researchers concluded.
One of the study's authors, Dr Simon Cauchemez, from Imperial's MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling, said: 'Our research shows that school closures could be a useful measure in terms of slowing the spread of a flu pandemic.
'However, its effectiveness would very much depend on what other measures, like vaccination or antiviral drugs, were put in place as well.'
Professor Neil Ferguson, another of the study's authors, cautioned: 'Closing schools for a long time is not an option you can take lightly, because it has a big economic and social impact, and the extent to which there would be a knock-on effect on transmission is hard to predict.'
He noted: 'Even though the children would not be in school, they would still mix with other children and adults in the community and spread the virus through this contact.'
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