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Experts urge flu planning at work

A survey shows many companies are unprepared to stay in business if a pandemic hit workers.

WASHINGTON - Most U.S. companies haven't planned for how to stay in business during a flu pandemic, or even if they'll follow federal advice that potentially contagious employees should stay home, a survey suggests.

Public health specialists and the government are pressuring businesses to prepare for a worldwide outbreak of the bird flu or some other superstrain of influenza, a crisis that could bankrupt many companies if their workers are too sick or scared to show up and their supply chains disappear.

The concern isn't just because of economics, but because many companies provide products and services that people literally can't live without, said Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota, who advises the government.

"Automobiles, jewelry and electronics will not be big-ticket items" during the next flu pandemic, Osterholm said. "We still have to feed people. How do we assure we have heat, fuel oil, electricity?"

In the survey of some of the nation's largest businesses, two-thirds said their companies were inadequately prepared to protect themselves during a pandemic. Demonstrating a surprising fatalism, 39 percent thought there wasn't much they could do.

Representatives of several Tampa Bay area companies surveyed Tuesday, including Progress Energy and Raymond James Financial, said they were unaware of any internal plans focusing on a flu pandemic. But they also indicated key personnel who would be involved in such planning were out of the office.

The results of the national survey also raise public health concerns. When asked if they would waive sick-leave restrictions to encourage workers with flu symptoms to stay home, 63 percent of the companies were undecided and 10 percent said they would not. That contradicts the federal government's stance that having the potentially contagious stay home from work or school could prove key to stemming a pandemic.

"Corporate America is like everybody: They read it and see it on television, but they really can't completely digest it," former Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said of the pandemic threat.

His new industry think tank, part of Deloitte & Touche USA, sponsored the survey.

The government has released a checklist of pandemic preparations companies should take. Among them: "That people have contingency plans that could accommodate between 10 and 20 percent of their work force being out at any given time for as much as two to four weeks," HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said.

Leavitt stresses that companies can learn from the months of disruption caused by last century's three flu pandemics, including the 1918 flu that killed about 50-million people worldwide, 500,000 in the United States.

Plan as if a blizzard were coming, Thompson and Osterholm advise - a blizzard that could last up to 18 months instead of a few days.

[Last modified December 28, 2005, 00:36:14]