It is recognized that a combination of early use of antiviral medicine and social distancing measures can help contain a pandemic, or at least slow its spread until proper vaccines can be developed (Nuñ o et al. 2007 ). However, due to limited medicine stockpiles and resources, policies must be made such that they optimize the drug usage while minimizing the cost and economic impact of the intervention strategies. Since it is not possible to experimentally assess the overall effectiveness of the various pandemic control strategies, mathematical models play a major role as they allow us to address such issues through simulations. Notable past works include examining how to contain a novel influenza strain at its source (Ferguson et al. 2005; Longini et al. 2005) , and failing that, how we can limit its impact within the population (Ferguson et al. 2006; Germann et al. 2006; Wu et al. 2006; Nuñ o et al. 2007) .