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Bird Flu May Strike Hard And Fast - Are you Prepared! 
 Bird flu expected to hit U.S. flocks soon!
The lethal avian flu that is spreading rapidly around the world could soon infect wild birds and domesticated flocks in the United States, U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said regarding the rapidily spreading H5N1 avian flu virus.
WASHINGTON - The United States is preparing for a worst-case scenario if bird flu causes a human pandemic, with a projected 92 million people sick, schools closed and businesses disrupted, Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt said Monday.
Leavitt said he was scheduling 50 separate state-by-state meetings with state and local officials to begin pinning down how each community will plan for the possible pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza.
“The reality is, and you know it -- pandemics happen,” Leavitt told a meeting in Washington of state and local health and emergency officials.
“When it comes to a pandemic, we are overdue and we are underprepared.”
The H5N1 avian flu virus has infected 130 people in five Asian countries and killed 69 of them. But it is spreading steadily among poultry flocks from China to Ukraine, and experts fully expect it will affect birds all around the world.
The U.S. plan includes a worst-case scenario with an outbreak starting in a small village in Thailand and spreading quickly to Europe and the United States.
“At the end of week six you will see pandemic cases (in the United States) that will be 722,000,” Leavitt said. Within 16 weeks of the theoretical Thai outbreak, 92 million Americans would have been infected with H5N1 flu.
The virus now has a known 50 percent mortality rate, but no one knows how it will mutate and how that will affect its ability to be transmitted, to cause disease and to kill.
It remains difficult for humans to catch -- for now.
“What we don’t have, and what we hope we never have, is sustained human to human transmission like we do with seasonal influenza,” Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the meeting.
Meetings within four months
But federal health officials said it was urgent for local communities to get prepared, and now.
“Emergency planning does not go well when undertaken in the middle of a disaster itself,” Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff told the meeting, citing lessons learned from Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Gulf of Mexico states in August and September.
“The earlier you begin to plan, the better off you are.”
Leavitt said governors were being asked to convene meetings within 120 days.
“We believe there is a great advantage if all of us are using the same pandemic planning assumptions,” Leavitt said.
Chertoff said a pandemic would affect “the entire fabric of our society” People will stay home from work and school, impacting supplies of food and possibly even water, electricity and fuel.
“We live in a world of just-in-time supply chains,” Chertoff said. That could mean shortages.
The HHS plan calls for schools to close for weeks at a stretch. “Closing schools has a profound consequence,” Leavitt said. “Movement restrictions of any sort, whether on the borders of our country or borders of our towns creates very real economic dilemmas,” he added.
There will be “agonizingly difficult choices about the distribution of food and resources”, Leavitt said.
But Dr. Rajeev Venkayya, senior director for biodefense on the White House Homeland Security council, said getting businesses and communities to plan now could reduce the impact.
“There are a series of concrete steps that institutions can take,” Venkayya told the meeting. “Teaching good infection control measures now pays dividends tomorrow.”
He said businesses were being asked to come up with plans now to keep minimal services running.
“The truth is that a pandemic influenza of some sort will ultimately be our lot to handle,” Venkayya said.
“We can become the very first society in the history of man to be prepared to do something about it.”
Hospitals, states, not ready for pandemic, health group reports
WASHINGTON - Hospitals are not prepared to handle the patients who would arrive after a disaster or a pandemic, most states have few plans in place for coping and the federal government has not taken charge of such preparation, according to a report released Tuesday.
Although President Bush released an influenza pandemic plan with great fanfare last month, and even though federal health experts have been issuing dire warnings for years, little has actually been done to get the nation ready, according to the Trust for America’s Health, or TFAH.
“While considerable progress has been achieved in improving America’s health emergency preparedness, the nation is still not adequately prepared for the range of serious threats we face,” the report from the non-profit health education group reads.
“To achieve an appropriate level of preparedness, efforts must be rapidly enhanced and accelerated, requiring improved policies and funding at all levels of government,” added the report, based on a survey of 20 public health experts, who evaluated 12 aspects of health emergency preparedness.
This is especially true with the new threat of H5N1 avian influenza, which is moving steadily through poultry and which has infected about at least 130 people, killing 69 of them. If the virus acquires the ability to pass easily from human to human, it will cause a pandemic that could kill tens of millions within a few months, experts predict.
“TFAH estimates that a midseverity pandemic outbreak could cause over half a million deaths and two million hospitalizations in the United States alone and could also disrupt the global economy.”
The U.S. government makes a much more dire prediction, saying two million people could die and a third of the population would become infected. It predicts up to 40 percent of the work force will be absent due to sickness or fear.
On Monday, U.S. health officials urged state and local governments to hold summits as soon as possible to plan for a possible pandemic.
State and local health officials have complained that the federal U.S. flu plan provides good guidance on vaccines and drugs but does little to address the more immediate problem of what already stretched hospitals will do if a third of the population gets sick at once.
“Hospitals in over 40 percent of states do not have sufficient backup supplies of medical equipment to meet surge capacity needs during a pandemic flu or other major infectious disease outbreak,” the Trust report reads.
“Over one-quarter of states do not have sufficient bioterrorism laboratory response capabilities,” it adds.
“Hospitals in only two states have sufficient plans, incentives, or provisions to encourage health-care workers to continue to come to work during a major infectious disease outbreak.”
The Trust report said the effects of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated Gulf of Mexico states in August and September, showed the poor level of U.S. preparation.
“The response to Hurricane Katrina was a sharp indictment of America’s emergency response capabilities,” said Lowell Weicker, president of the Trust’s board and a former senator and governor of Connecticut, in a statement.
“This report provides further evidence of the major gap between response 'plans' and 'realities.' We need to get real in our planning for health emergencies.”
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