U.S. Health Officials Unveil Flu Pandemic Plan

Outbreaks would be tackled based on a 'severity index' of transmission, they say.

By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
Thursday, February 1, 2007; 12:00 AM

Copyright © 2007 ScoutNews, LLC. All rights reserved.

THURSDAY, Feb. 1 (HealthDay News) -- U.S. health officials on Thursday outlined an early-warning system similar to that employed for hurricanes to protect and mobilize the country against a flu pandemic.

The community-based response system would categorize flu pandemics on a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the deadliest. Each level of the "Pandemic Severity Index" (PSI) carries a set 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.

"One important and new concept is that not all pandemics are equally severe, and we have used what we know about epidemiology to devise a severity index," Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), told a press teleconference.

"One that does not move very fast from person to person would likely be a fairly mild pandemic. On the other hand, we know from 1918 that we had a pandemic that not only moved with extraordinary speed but also had an unusually high mortality rate. We would categorize that as a category 5 pandemic," she added.

The teleconference took place a day after the CDC's first "full functional" avian flu exercise, in which all personnel at the Atlanta headquarters participated.

Health officials have worried that the bird flu virus currently circulating around the globe might mutate, unleashing a new type of flu virus that could prove even more deadly because people's immune systems would not be able to fend off the disease.

The existing H5N1 bird flu strain has generated more fear than normal because of its virulence and ease of transmission among flocks of domestic birds. So far, bird flu has infected 270 people around the world and killed 164.

Human casualties remain largely confined to Asia and to people who have had close and prolonged contact with infected birds, such as poultry farm workers. And, so far, the H5N1 virus has not demonstrated the ability to jump easily from person to person.