RESEARCH ARTICLE Transmission of the First Influenza A(H1N1) pdm09 Pandemic Wave in Australia Was Driven by Undetected Infections: Pandemic Response Implications

Background During the first wave of influenza A(H1N1)pdm09 in Victoria, Australia the rapid increase in notified cases and the high proportion with relatively mild symptoms suggested that commu-nity transmission was established before cases were identified. This lead to the hypothesis that those with low-level infections were the main drivers of the pandemic. Methods A deterministic susceptible-infected-recovered model was constructed to describe the first pandemic wave in a population structured by disease severity levels of asymptomatic, low-level symptoms, moderate symptoms and severe symptoms requiring hospitalisation. The model incorporated mixing, infectivity and duration of infectiousness parameters to calcu-late subgroup-specific reproduction numbers for each severity level. Results With stratum-specific effective reproduction numbers of 1.82 and 1.32 respectively, those with low-level symptoms, and those with asymptomatic infections were responsible fo