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PEOPLE who were in contact with those infected in a pandemic can still go to work without worsening the outbreak, if given preventive medicine and kept from those who were not exposed, a study here has found.
This strategy will keep productivity levels high, which is important for essential services such as health care, said the study’s lead researcher, Dr Vernon Lee, who heads the Singapore Armed Forces Biodefence
Centre.
In the study on four outbreaks of H1N1 in military camps here last June involving 1,175 personnel, the infected ones were isolated.
The rest were given preventive medicine Tamiflu and segregated from those who had not been in contact with the patients.
Before this was done, 6.4 per cent of those at risk were infected. The number fell to 0.6 per cent after that.
The study was publishedin the New England Journal Of Medicine yesterday.
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