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U.S. planning for worst-case scenario

Infection Control Monitor, December 12, 2005

The United States is preparing a plan for a worst-case scenario should bird flu cause a human pandemic, Reuters reports. Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt is scheduling 50 separate state-by-state meetings with state and local officials to begin pinning down how each community will plan for a possible pandemic of H5N1 avian influenza.

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. 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."

So far, the H5N1 avian flu virus has infected 130 people in five Asian countries and killed 69. It is spreading steadily among poultry flocks from China to Ukraine, and experts fully expect it will affect birds all around the world.

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