U.S. Plans For Bird Flu Disruptions
Employers should have plans to keep workers at least three feet apart, colleges should consider which dormitories could be used to quarantine the sick, and flight crews should have surgical masks to put on coughing travelers under a draft of the government's pandemic flu plan obtained by The Associated Press.
The Bush administration forecasts massive disruptions if bird flu or some other super-strain of influenza arises in the United States. A response plan scheduled to be released at the White House on Wednesday warns employers that as much as 40 percent of the work force could be off the job and says every segment of society must prepare.
"The collective response of 300 million Americans will significantly influence the shape of the pandemic and its medical, social and economic outcomes," says an undated 228-page draft version of the report that had not been finalized. "Institutions in danger of becoming overwhelmed will rely on the voluntarism and sense of civic and humanitarian duty of ordinary Americans."
An outbreak in the U.S. could lead to a variety of restrictions on movement in and around the country, including limiting the number of international flights and quarantining exposed travelers. But the government does not foresee closing U.S. borders to fight the spread of flu.
"If you were able to limit the number of individuals with flu from coming into this country by 90 percent, if you had a magic wand to remove 90 percent of individuals, you might delay the peak of a pandemic by one to two weeks," Rajeev Venkayya, special assistant to the president for biodefense, told CBS News chief White House correspondent Jim Axelrod.
It's impossible to predict when the next pandemic will strike, or how great its toll might be. But concern is rising that the Asian bird flu, called the H5N1 strain, might lead to one if it eventually starts spreading easily from person to person.
So far, H5N1 has struck more than 200 people since 2003, killing about half of them. Virtually all the victims caught it from close contact with infected poultry or droppings.
The government is preparing for a worst-case scenario of up to 2 million deaths in the United States.
With no border restrictions, pandemic influenza would arrive in the United States within two months of an outbreak abroad, the document estimates. But models of influenza's spread suggest that sealing the U.S. border would not only be impractical — 1.1 million people cross the nation's 317 official ports of entry daily — but it would only delay the inevitable by a few weeks, it says.
"Even if 99 percent of international air were stopped, every country would in all probability still be infected," said Ben Cooper of England's Health Protection Agency and an author of the study being published in the online science journal PLoS Medicine Monday. "Even if 99.9 percent of travel were stopped, very few cities would escape the pandemic."
The computer-predicted scenario by the agency was published a week after researchers at Imperial College in London showed the United States could do little to slow a pandemic if it hit now.
Cooper said the computer model was based on "optimistic assumptions" and that shutting down nearly all air travel won't stop the flu's spread because there isn't enough vaccine to inoculate everybody.
A third study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences earlier this month suggested that even a 90 percent reduction in domestic travel would slow the spread of the flu in the United States by only a few days to weeks and would not reduce the eventual size of the outbreak.
Robert G. Webster, a virologist at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, said it has been historically rare for bird influenza viruses to reach the Americas from Europe.
He said infected birds being smuggled into the U.S. pose a bigger threat right now than fears that migratory birds en route to America might mix with infected birds from Europe or Asia.
"While wildlife people in the United States are watching for the appearance of this virus, I would suspect that it may not come this year," he told The Associated Press.
"If it doesn't come this year, don't relax, because it will eventually come," said Webster, who is in Singapore ahead of a two-day conference this week that is expected to draw many of the world's leading scientists on bird flu.
The new administration document calls mandatory quarantine a last resort, and urges planners to consider, for example, that closing a community would sever it from the delivery of groceries and other essential goods.
The report aims to energize the private sector, noting that 85 percent of the systems that are vital to society, such as food production, medicine and financial services, are privately run.
Not only would sick workers stay home, but so would anyone who was caring for ill family members, under quarantine because of possible exposure to the flu or taking care of children when schools shut down. The same could go for anyone who simply feels safer at home.
The report envisions possible breakdowns in public order and says governors might deploy National Guard troops or request federal troops to maintain order. The military also could be activated to enforce travel restrictions and deliver vaccines and medicines, the report says.
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