Businesses need to plan on having 40 percent of their workforces out if a flu pandemic strikes and need to start rewarding employees for staying home when they are sick, government advisers told a conference Tuesday.
The H5N1 avian influenza virus will almost certainly spread to birds in the United States eventually, and if it mutates into a form that easily infects people it will spread globally within weeks, they noted.
If that happens, up to a third of people will be sickened by the virus in the space of a few weeks, another third will have to stay home to care for ill relatives or children kept out of school, and others will be afraid to come to work or may have trouble getting in if mass transit systems break down.
“We have seen, in the past several weeks, a remarkable acceleration of the pandemic in birds,” Dr. Rajiv Venkayya, special assistant for biodefense to President Bush, told the conference.
“It’s something short of inevitable that we will see a case of H5N1 here in the U.S.”
Sweden Tuesday became the latest in a series of new countries to report an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu among wild birds. It has also spread to domestic poultry in several western European countries and in the African countries of Niger and Nigeria, as well as Egypt.
“Every day there’s another country,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. “It’s going to go all the way across, there’s no doubt about it.”
The epidemic affects birds in many Asian countries, and has infected 173 people, killing 93 of them, according to the World Health Organization.
No one can say if the virus will evolve into a form that passes easily among humans, but WHO and other experts say a pandemic of some disease is inevitable and that planning now will not be wasted.
Preparing for empty offices
“At the peak of the pandemic each company must be prepared to sustain absenteeism of up to 40 percent,” Venkayya told the conference, sponsored by the Trust for Americas Health and Fleishman-Hillard public relations.
Some businesses will be able to get by with letting employees work from home. “We need to understand the role of telework,” he said. But others will have to be encouraged to stay home.
“We need to change our approach to absenteeism,” Venkayya said.
This may be tough, others told the conference. “Half of America’s workers have no sick leave,” said Jeffrey Levi of the Trust for America’s Health.
“We are going to ask people to stay home.” But if workers face losing pay if they do not show up, they will come out while sick and will spread influenza, Levi said.
“The approach of most organizations is you go to work whether you have a cold, whether you are half dead,” said Dr. Myles Druckman of International SOS, an international medical assistance firm.
“They are going to have to change their whole corporate culture.”
Companies should make permanent infection-control measures that can reduce absences from illness in any year, not just a pandemic, Venkayya said.
But holes remain in the plan, published on the Internet at http://www.pandemicflu.gov.
For instance, Lisa Summers of the American College of Nurse-Midwives asked Venkayya if there was a provision in the plan for the 4 million children who are born in the United States each year. “What happens to a healthy woman who chooses not to birth in a hospital in a flu epidemic?” Summers asked.
“If that guidance exists, I haven’t seen it,” Venkayya admitted.
