H1N1 Can Make Businesses Sick, Too

(CBS)  The NFL's perennially struggling Cleveland Browns have found another opponent they can't beat, reports CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor: the H1N1 virus.

Twelve players are home sick with flu-like symptoms and the team scaled back practice sessions.

"All I can do is the preventative steps, you know, washing my hands and all that stuff that goes along with going to kindergarten class," said Browns linebacker David Bowens.

Nearby, the Cleveland Clinic has more than 200 workers out. They've set up a special "phone triage" hotline where a nurse helps employees determine if they have the flu.

Special Report: H1N1 Virus
60 Minutes: H1N1 Most Dangerous to Young People

"It's critical to assure employees we want them to get better, stay home and then return to work when they're well," said the Cleveland Clinic Dr. Thomas Tallman. "It also provides us a way to track them."

In Boston, the Port Authority is training extra workers to operate snowplows - following concern regular drivers will get sick.

And in Malibu, Calif., one restaurant is giving its employees vitamins and wiping down every door knob every two hours.

A bad flu season would do more than make people sick - it would make the economy sick too. Worst-case estimates have a full H1N1 pandemic costing the nation $700 billion, knocking up to 4 percent off our gross domestic product.

Karen Mills heads the Small Business Administration. She knows many large corporations have contingency plans, but a recent survey shows 68 percent of small businesses do not.

"The biggest challenge for a small business is going to be to find the time to just sit down and prepare," she said.

More than 50 percent of Americans either own or work for a small business and they're expected to play a key role in the nation's economic recovery. But if the H1N1 epidemic continues to hit businesses the way it's hit the Browns and the Cleveland Clinic - that recovery could take a lot longer than anyone expected.

Related information:

CDC: Learn More About H1N1
CDC: What To Do If You Get Sick
Flu.gov: Where To Get Your Flu Shots

[speedylee]

The headline and article are misleading - players have the flu and the author writes with the assumption that it is H1N1 but there are no facts other than they had flu-like symptoms. Only the caption on the photo indicates that it might not be H1N1. Guess more people will read the article if it is about the "scary" H1N1 virus.