Hurricane style warning system will help U.S. cope with a bird flu pandemic

Health officials in the United States have come up with a system for dealing with a flu pandemic.

The plan is an early-warning ranking system similar to that deployed at times of hurricanes and is intended to protect and mobilize the country against a flu pandemic.

The system advocates a community-based response which would categorize flu pandemics on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the deadliest.

The "Pandemic Severity Index" (PSI) sets out levels of recommendations, ranging from hand washing to closing schools, which are intended to slow the spread of the virus while a vaccine is being prepared.

The new PSI suggests gradually escalating the strategies when a super-flu's threat becomes great enough to justify doing so.

According to Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), not all pandemics are equally severe and information they now have on epidemiology will help to devise a severity index.

The CDC has quite deliberately copied the nation's hurricane ranking system to help the general public immediately recognize what to expect once a pandemic strikes, and help communities decide what measures to take.

Dr. Julie Gerberding says a pandemic which does not quickly from person to person would be considered a fairly mild pandemic, while one such as the 1918 outbreak moved with extraordinary speed and had an unusually high mortality rate; that would be categorized as a category 5 pandemic.

The CDC has conducted it's first "fully functional" avian flu exercise, in which all personnel at the Atlanta headquarters were involved.

Experts have been concerned for some time that the bird flu virus currently circulating around the globe could mutate into a new type of flu virus for which people have little immunity, triggering a pandemic with the potential to kill millions worldwide.

The current form of H5N1 bird flu doing the rounds is a worry because of its virulence and the ease of transmission among flocks of domestic birds.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) bird flu has to date infected 270 people around the world and killed 165, mostly in Asia.

So far, the H5N1 virus does not appear to have developed the ability to jump easily from person to person.

But despite recent reports that a pandemic may not be close-at-hand, U.S. health officials are still concerned.

Mike Leavitt, Human Services Secretary says although the media buzz may have died down, the H5N1 virus has not and the disease remains highly pathogenic and continues to spread.

Leavitt suggests another pandemic is almost inevitable.

The new initiative has two components, a "community mitigation guide," which outlines specific steps for communities to take depending on the severity of the pandemic such as requiring people who are sick to stay at home until they are no longer contagious in the case of a level 1 situation; closing schools and child-care programs for up to three months in the case of a more severe pandemic; canceling public meetings; and asking people to work from home.

Officials admit that there will be problems as some adults may have to stay home from work to look after children who can no longer go to school and communities will need to take such effects into account.

The second component of the initiative is a public service announcement (PSA) campaign that will direct people to a government web site.

It is not expected that all communities will implement all of the guidelines and Gerberding says although the recommendations are complete, what an individual or a community does depends on local circumstances, but the earlier the plans are implemented, the better.

Gerberding says the guidance is interim but the best on offer at present.