We first simulated the spread of the pandemic influenza under various intervention policies and diagnostic methods using the default parameters (see the electronic supplementary material). For the testkits, we assumed a specificity of 100 per cent and sensitivity of 70 per cent. From our simulations, the basic reproduction number (R 0 ) is computed to be approximately 1.9, representing a moderately infectious pandemic outbreak. The results are shown in figures 4 and 5.