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April 27, 2009 By Elaine Rundle
The deaths of up to 103 people in Mexico deemed likely linked to the swine flu and the appearance of it in the United States has got the world thinking about pandemics. Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), said the swine flu virus has "pandemic potential," reported The Washington Post.
PandemicFlu.gov defines a pandemic flu as a virulent human flu that causes a global outbreak of serious illness. Because there's little natural immunity, the disease can spread easily from person to person.
The WHO said Monday that there are 40 confirmed swine flu cases in the United States, but there haven't been any deaths. In Mexico, 26 of 103 deaths were confirmed to be swine flu related and the remaining 77 deaths are said to likely have been caused by it.
"I'd suggest emergency managers dust off the pandemic plans they wrote three years ago," commented Valerie Lucus, emergency and business continuity manager of the University of California at Davis, by e-mail. "This is going to be as much a public anxiety crisis -- especially now -- as it is a health-care issue. It could easily become a business continuity/continuity of operations exercise based on excessive absenteeism." Excessive absenteeism is when there aren't enough people coming to work or an organization to keep the systems and processes running.
On Sunday the number of swine flu cases in the United States rose to 20, prompting the nation to declare a public health emergency. "This is standard operating procedure and allows us to free up federal, state and local agencies and their resources for prevention and mitigation; it allows us to use medication and diagnostic tests that we might not otherwise be able to use, particularly on very young children; and it releases funds for the acquisition of additional anti-virals," said Janet Napolitano, secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, in a press briefing.
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