I note in my mailbox today that the New Zealand Health Minister Tony Ryall is declaring a policy of “keep it out, stamp it out” as regards Influenza A/H1N1. The Aussies tried this the last time we had a pandemic strain and found that they got a worse hit during the second wave.

I can understand the temptation to delay spread until a vaccine is available – if you can make enough in time for the whole population – but with the vaccine predicted to take until September 2009 (WHO) to be ready this is not going to be possible – especially when you consider the rules of the game require countries to share the vaccine around with other countries on a priority basis.

Perhaps the over-riding issues in the management of this pandemic are related to minismising financial loss? Certainly the negative affects of poor publicity relating to the “swine flu” have influenced decisions to stop reporting spread (USA) and in some cases bring people back from the dead (Mexico).

Perhaps the best thing to do is to allow the spread of the virus whilst it is mild and build some immunity. As Ministers keep telling us – “The NHS has never been better prepared”. The reality is of course that the hospitals are not prepared and don’t have enough ventilators to cope with a large influx of seriously ill patients with respiratory tract infections so countries are playing for time.

What do you think? Please leave a comment.

Had an interesting discussion with a purveyor of FFP3 flu masks today and revisited various documents and sites to see whether my views on masks as a mitigation against catching H1N1 remain the same.

Evidence from tests carried out by the Health Protection Agency show that you have 100 times more protection from live viruses if you wear a properly fitted FFP3 mask so as a personal choice it makes sense if you think that the risk of catching the flu is very high and the symptoms of the flu become more severe (or you have a heightened risk profile due to an underlying condition).

For companies you have to balance the legal requirements to provide adequate Personal Protective Equipment based on a risk assessment. If you decide to provide (that’s got a nice ring to it!) then you need to make sure they are fitted – which opens up a world of logistical issues and costs including training staff how to don them, writing policy about when to change them and procuring suitable testing equipment to provide an audit trail that you have done as much as you can to safeguard your staff.

At the moment you need to focus on seasonal flu as the higher risk but as H1N1 continues to spread and mix with other viruses it can mutate and change into something more deadly.

The WHO alert state is likely to be increased to level 6 tomorrow in light of the virus’s sustained person to person spread. You might want to dust off your plan and check what actions you committed to back in the day when you wrote it.

@Veterus Jun 2009

Swine flu (H1N1) continues to gather pace stealthily around the world as I write this.  Whilst the symptoms of the illness and the numbers of cases remain well below the usual winter flu statistics, there is increasing concern that this virus will develop into the pandemic strain that we have been preparing for.

At home our preparations are in good shape.  We’ve got plenty of medication in the house and basic foodstuffs that can be simply prepared if we are ill.  We’ve also embedded the “catch it, kill it, bin it” slogan into the kids so they understand the importance of personal hygiene.

At work we have practiced a daily reporting process for confirming who is available for work, who is ill and who is on leave.  We’ve also developed a capability dashboard based on the MEDIC theme.