Partial immunity and vaccination for influenza.

In this article, we estimated the basic reproductive numbers by mathematical modeling and computer simulation using the hospitalization data of influenza type A (H3N2) from the United States as provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) from the 2001 to 2006 influenza seasons, respectively. The mean value of basic reproductive number from the 2001-2002 to 2005-2006 influenza seasons is 1.2440, with a 95% confidence interval of 1.1170-1.3710. Our model predicts that the proportion of vaccination of susceptible is 20% and 60 million doses of vaccines should be prepared for each influenza season in the United States. The chi-square test of goodness of fit indicates that our model fits the data reasonably well.