Another factor influencing the necessity of testkits, which is closely related to their sensitivity, is the repercussions of not treating a pandemic-positive individual. In figure 4, the total attack and peak attack rates for non-treatment are shown as base lines. For a moderately infectious variant as simulated in our model, an untreated case may not spread the virus in an exponential manner. As such, a testkit may be used to reduce drug wastage, but a highly sensitive one may not be required since the infectiousness of the individual is limited. However, for the more transmissible cases, such as the ongoing H1N1 swine flu outbreak (at the time of writing; Neumann et al. 2009 ; Novel Swine-Origin Influenza A (H1N1) Virus Investigation Team 2009), it may be unwise to leave a potentially infectious person untreated. If a sensitive testkit is not yet available, then assuming that a symptomatic individual has (d) Figure 13 . Simulation results without hospital segregation. The diagram shows the (a) total attack rate, (b) drug usage, (c) testkit usage and (d) total work hours lost for the various intervention policies and diagnostic approaches without designating one hospital as a flu hospital. Note that for all cases, D4 has a higher total attack rate and it consumes more resources as compared with D2 and D3 (black bar, D1; light grey bar, D2; dark grey bar, D3; white bar, D4; solid line, base P1).