CDC Chief Warns Pandemic Flu Is Coming

During a a national conference Thursday Dr. Julie Gerberding director of the CDC says "ready or not, a flu pandemic is coming."

"No one knows when the pandemic is coming or what strain of flu virus will cause it, but it is overdue", she said.

She was also correct in her statement in which she said, "politicians are not talking about a flu pandemic or the bird flu virus, which may or may not be the virus that causes the next pandemic. No one is talking about it, and it’s not on their radar screen.”

At the conference she also made mention that critical products and services including food, and water and basic drugs will be unavailable due to transportation and energy problems.

For more on this story please visit our Source.

Guidance on Pandemic Vaccination Allocation Announced Today From DHS, And HHS

Press Release below:

Release Date: July 23, 2008

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010

The U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Homeland Security (DHS) released guidance on allocating and targeting pandemic influenza vaccine. The guidance provides a planning framework to help state, tribal, local and community leaders ensure that vaccine allocation and use will reduce the impact of a pandemic on public health and minimize disruption to society and the economy.

"This guidance is the result of a deliberative democratic process," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said. "All interested parties took part in the dialogue; we are confident that this document represents the best of shared responsibility and decision-making."

"A severe pandemic has the potential to disrupt our everyday way of life," said DHS Assistant Secretary for Health Affairs and Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jeffrey Runge. "This guidance was developed to ensure that our nation's critical infrastructure remains up and running and we address the needs of all of our citizens, enabling the country to recover from a pandemic more quickly."

As part of developing the guidance, HHS held day-long public engagement and stakeholder meetings throughout the country and received more than 200 written public comments on the goals and objectives of pandemic vaccination. In all the meetings, stakeholders and the public identified the same four vaccination program objectives as the most important:

• Protect persons critical to the pandemic response and who provide care for persons with pandemic illness;
• Protect persons who provide essential community services;
• Protect persons who are at high risk of infection because of their occupation; and
• Protect children.

The guidance is also firmly rooted in the most up-to-date scientific information available and directly considers the values of our society and the ethical issues involved in planning a phased approach to pandemic vaccination.

The ultimate goal of the pandemic vaccination program is to vaccinate every person in the United States who wants to be vaccinated. Because pandemic vaccine cannot be made fast enough for everyone to be vaccinated at once, federal, state, local and tribal governments, communities, and the private sector can use the guidance to decide who should be vaccinated during this early stage to best protect people and communities.

The guidance's vaccination structure defines four broad target groups: people who 1) maintain homeland and national security, 2) provide health care and community support services, 3) maintain critical infrastructure and 4) are in the general population.

Everyone in the United States is included in at least one vaccination target group. People who are not included in any occupational group would be vaccinated as part of the general population based on their age and health status.

While vaccines are an important resource in a pandemic, vaccination will only be one of several tools to fight the spread of influenza if and when a pandemic emerges. Other tools include community public health measures, antiviral medications, facemasks and respirators, washing hands, and covering coughs and sneezes.

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Source

Pandemic Planning For Your Business

Planning for a pandemic especially in todays global business environment is essential for a business to survive. For it is not "IF" the next pandemic will occur it is "WHEN."

In the last century there were three separate pandemics that occurred the last of which was known as the Hong Kong Flu (H3N2) in 1968, another in 1957 known as Asian Flu (H2N2) and the Spanish Flu which occurred in 1918.

The Spanish Flu resulted in 50 to 100 million plus deaths worldwide and 550,000 - 675,000 deaths in the United States. The virus in the United States caused quarantines of entire Cities, the required wearing of masks while out in public, a shortage of caskets and mass burials, the closure of schools and businesses and widespread fear and panic.

What does all of this mean to you and your business?

It is time to prepare now and create a contingency plan so that your business and your employees can sustain the effects of the next pandemic.

Planing for a pandemic is different from regular business continuity planning in that business continuity plans are generally based on two assumptions:

1. That you will be back to "business as usual" within a specified time frame usually 30 days or less.
2. That you can go from the "affected" site to the "unaffected" site and resume business operations.

These assumptions do not apply when it comes to pandemic planning.

Some of the things that you can expect from a pandemic however will be a high absenteeism rate from staff, vendors, and services including health care, police and fire etc. (some place the estimates of absenteeism around 40%, though I personally expect it to be higher).

The pandemic may last as long as eighteen months and come in three separate waves, and critical functions that are carried out by contractors, consultants, and vendors cannot be guaranteed. The closure of many public and private gathering places such as schools, churches, malls etc. You can also expect that the infrastructure of society will be highly stressed, but will most likely remain functional though to a lesser degree than what we may expect.

Those businesses that are planning on having large amounts of employees telecommute may also face further interruptions as the impact on communications networks will stretch the capabilities of the networks to the breaking point and sustained outages will occur.

How do you overcome these problems?

• Plan now, plan early and be flexible in your planning.
  
• Inform and educate employees and management on what to expect, and how you plan on carrying out operations during a pandemic.
  
• Consider partnering with other businesses, and speak to your local health department.
  
• Space employees further apart.
• Allow for virtual meetings
• Minimize face to face contact
• Educate on cleanliness, hand washing, covering your cough, and cleaning the workspace.
• Provide hand sanitizers.
  
• Provide Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) such as masks and gloves.
• Consider stockpiling pharmacological products.

If you would like more information or help in creating your pandemic plan please visit

Dynamic Network Technologies

For further reading please refer to the following sites.

Pandemicflu.gov
pandemictoolkit.com

Back From the Pandemic Workshop

The Workshop was a huge success, very informative. Several people mentioned that it was one of the best events they have been to in quite some time. I will have to agree with that statement.

I'll post some more on the event tomorrow. Since I was working on less than two hours sleep I am completely exhausted and need some down time to recoup.

I will make this one announcement on the site now though.

Roche, the company who sponsored the event announced some breaking news during a press conference today (and at the workshop) that they are going to offer companies the option of having the drug Tamilflu stockpiled for them in the event of a pandemic.

More on this and the event tomorrow.

Source 1
Source 2

Attending Pandemic Workshop In San Francisco

I am currently at the Pandemic Workshop here in San Francisco hoping to see some new developments and learn something new during the workshop.

I'll comment further on my experience there and how it went when I get back later in the evening.

If you happen to be attending and you know who I am feel free to stop and say hello.

It should be fun and educational, see you there.