Simulation of passenger screening for pandemic influenza at U.S. airport ports of entry

We present a stochastic discrete event simulation that was developed to model the screening of international airline passengers arriving at U.S. airport ports of entry for pandemic influenza. The simulation begins with the generation of international aircraft arrival patterns to the United States. Based on assumed prevalence rates in their origin countries, passengers are randomly assigned to one of three infected states in the simulation - not infected, infected with pandemic influenza, infected with other respiratory illness. Passengers then pass through various screening layers and ultimately exit the system. We track the declared outcome of each passenger over time as they exit the screening process, with a special emphasis on false negatives as they pose the most significant threat to our nation as they will exit the system and unknowingly further spread the pandemic virus throughout the United States. Extensions to DoD environment will also be discussed.