U.S. companies prepare for bird flu pandemic
Tue Feb 6, 2007 8:24pm ET

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

ORLANDO, Florida (Reuters) - Exxon plans to keep some refinery workers living in the plants to keep them going. A small Southern grocery chain is thinking about drive-through pickup of soup and bread.

The U.S. Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration urged employers to develop plans to cope with a possible flu pandemic on Tuesday, suggesting letting employees work from home and encouraging sick workers to stay home without reprisals.

But a few international companies and small regional firms were already making bird flu planning a full-time job, and said on Tuesday they have had to prepare for the unthinkable.

Jay Schwartz, vice president of information systems at North Carolina-based Alex Lee Inc., is worried about what will happen when food supplies begin to get scarce as people become ill, stay home to care for children when schools close or tend to ill relatives.

"Security is a huge issue," Schwartz, whose company owns a chain of grocery stores and an institutional food supplier, told a conference in Orlando.

Big food trucks may be targeted by bandits. "Maybe we'll have someone riding shotgun for added security," Schwartz told the Business Preparedness for Pandemic Influenza summit, sponsored by the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

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Experts almost universally agree that the world is ripe for a pandemic of some infectious disease. The H5N1 avian influenza virus is considered the leading candidate to cause one.

It can sometimes infect people and has sickened at least 271, killing 166 of them, according to the latest World Health Organization count.

If the virus mutated in just the right way, it could easily begin spreading like common respiratory infections -- only with much more deadly effect. WHO predicts the outcome would be devastating.

"During a pandemic, workplaces can likely experience high absenteeism -- probably as much as 40 percent of the workforce," OSHA official Amanda Edens told reporters.

LEARNING BY TRIAL AND ERROR

"What we are trying to find are the few who have those critical first-step plans that are going to help others," said Mike Osterholm, a University of Minnesota infectious disease expert who arranged the conference.

One big concern -- how to keep employees on the job if schools close and people begin to fear big gatherings. In a pandemic, the biggest danger may be the person next to you.

"We don't have the option of shutting facilities down. We have the obligation of providing energy," said James McEnery, deputy vice-president for human resources at Exxon Mobil Corp.

"We are going to ask some employees to come in and live in the facility," McEnery told the conference.

Food suppliers also feel an obligation, Schwartz said.

His stores may switch to products that people can stock, such as canned stew. They may arrange for drive-through pickup to avoid person-to-person contact. But this presents its own problems.

"What do you do if a guy pulls up in a pickup truck and wants to buy all the soup?" Schwartz asked.

Other companies feel well set up to make use of teleworkers.

"Everybody has got a laptop," said James Wall, global managing director of human resources for Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. "Our plans assume that people would have to shelter in place and stay where they are."

Some companies plan to offer moral support, too.

"We employ approximately 200 chaplains of many faiths," said Ken Kimbro, a vice president at Tyson Foods Inc. "We rely very heavily upon this group in times of stress."

(With additional reporting by Will Dunham in Washington)

Originally published at: http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=businessNews&storyID=2007-02-07T012416Z_01_N06268695_RTRUKOC_0_US-BIRDFLU-
COMPANIES.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2

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Ready or Not, Bird Flu Is Coming to America

Officials Advise Stocking Up on Provisions -- and Warn That Infected Birds Cannot Be Prevented From Flying In

By BRIAN ROSS

March 13, 2006 - - In a remarkable speech over the weekend, Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt recommended that Americans start storing canned tuna and powdered milk under their beds as the prospect of a deadly bird flu outbreak approaches the United States.

Ready or not, here it comes.

It is being spread much faster than first predicted from one wild flock of birds to another, an airborne delivery system that no government can stop.

"There's no way you can protect the United States by building a big cage around it and preventing wild birds from flying in and out," U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Michael Johanns said.

U.S. spy satellites are tracking the infected flocks, which started in Asia and are now heading north to Siberia and Alaska, where they will soon mingle with flocks from the North American flyways.

"What we're watching in real time is evolution," said Laurie Garrett, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations. "And it's a biological process, and it is, by definition, unpredictable."


Industry Precautions
America's poultry farms could become ground zero as infected flocks fly over. The industry says it is prepared for quick action.

"All the birds involved in it would be destroyed, and the area would be isolated and quarantined," said Richard Lobb of the National Chicken Council. "It would very much [look] like a sort of military operation if it came to that."

Extraordinary precautions are already being taken at the huge chicken farms in Lancaster County, Pa., the site of the last great outbreak of a similar bird flu 20 years ago.

Other than the farmers, everyone there has to dress as if it were a visit to a hospital operating room.

"Back in 1983-1984, we had to kill 17 million birds at a cost of $60 million," said Dr. Sherrill Davison, a veterinary medicine expert at the University of Pennsylvania.


Can It Be Stopped?
Even on a model farm, ABC News saw a pond just outside the protected barns attracting wild geese.

It is the droppings of infected waterfowl that carry the virus.

The bird flu virus, to date, is still not easily transmitted to humans. There have been lots of dead birds on three continents, but so far fewer than 100 reported human deaths.

But should that change, the spread could be rapid.

ABC News has obtained a mathematical projection prepared by federal scientists based on an initial outbreak on an East Coast chicken farm in which humans are infected. Within three months, with no vaccine, almost half of the country would have the flu.

That, of course, is a worst-case scenario -- one that Lobb says the poultry industry is determined to prevent with an aggressive strategy to contain and destroy infected flocks and deny the virus the opportunity to mutate to a more dangerous form but one that experts say cannot be completely discounted.

The current bird flu strain has been around for at least 10 years and has taken surprising twists and turns -- not the least of which is that it's now showing up in cats in Europe, where officials are advising owners to bring their cats inside. It's advice that might soon have to be considered here.

Copyright © 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

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Renowned Bird Flu Expert Warns: Be Prepared

There Are "About Even Odds" That the Virus Could Mutate to an Easily Transmitted Form, He Tells 'World News Tonight'

By JIM AVILA and MEREDITH RAMSEY

March 14, 2006 - Robert G. Webster is one of the few bird flu experts confident enough to answer the key question: Will the avian flu switch from posing a terrible hazard to birds to becoming a real threat to humans?

There are "about even odds at this time for the virus to learn how to transmit human to human," he told ABC's "World News Tonight." Webster, the Rosemary Thomas Chair at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, Tenn., is credited with being the first scientist to find the link between human flu and bird flu.

Webster and his team of scientists are working to find a way to beat the virus if it morphs. He has even been dubbed the Flu Hunter.

Right now, H5N1, a type of avian influenza virus, has confined itself to birds. It can be transmitted from bird to human but only by direct contact with the droppings and excretions of infected birds.

But viruses mutate, and the big fear among the world's scientists is that the bird flu virus will join the human flu virus, change its genetic code and emerge as a new and deadly flu that can spread through the air from human to human.

"I personally believe it will happen and make personal preparations," said Webster, who has stored a three-month supply of food and water at his home in case of an outbreak.


Frightening Warning
"Society just can't accept the idea that 50 percent of the population could die. And I think we have to face that possibility," Webster said. "I'm sorry if I'm making people a little frightened, but I feel it's my role."

Most scientists won't put it that bluntly, but many acknowledge that Webster could be right about the flu becoming transmissible among humans, even though they believe the 50 percent figure could be too high.

Researcher Dr. Anne Moscona at New York Weill Cornell Medical Center said that a human form may not mutate this year or next - or ever - but it would be foolish to ignore the dire consequences if it did.

"If bird flu becomes not bird flu but mutates into a form that can be transmitted between humans, we could then have a spread like wildfire across the globe," Moscona said.

No one knows how long or how many mutation changes it would take for bird flu to become a direct threat to humans.

"It may not do it. There may just be too many changes. The virus may not be able to be a human virus," Moscona said.

But that hasn't stopped Moscona from searching for new types of anti-viral treatments that both prevent and slow the spread of bird flu.
"I don't think that once we have human-to-human transmission, it's going to be possible to contain it," she said.
That is why nearly every viral scientist in America, perhaps the world, is waiting and watching the avian flu virus to see if it remains just a threat to birds or changes its genetic code and becomes just as deadly to humans.

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