Workforce Grounds by a pandemic

Aubrey Q. Del Rosario

With the increase in global transportation and urbanization, epidemics caused by a virus are likely to occur. As such, workforce continuity strategies should be a top priority to business continuity and emergency management. During a pandemic, absenteeism rates can climb to as high as 20-50 percent due to employee illness, caring for sick family members, fear of contagion, or lack of medical, public, or transportation resources. Employees are the revenue and profit drivers of most businesses, so early workforce continuity planning is essential as every person who becomes ill is likely to miss a few days to many weeks of work. What are the differences between an outbreak, endemic, epidemic, and a pandemic? Outbreak – It is when there are more than the number of cases of a disease in one area. The area could be a small community or extend to several countries.

A single instance of a contagious illness new to an area or not seen for a long time is defined as an outbreak and can last for a few days, weeks, or several years. There are three types of outbreaks an endemic, epidemic, and pandemic. Endemic – An endemic is an outbreak that occurs at a predictable rate in a particular population or area. Chickenpox is an example of an endemic because it occurs at a high but predictable rate among children. Endemics remain at a steady rate but don’t disappear from a population. Epidemic – An epidemic is an outbreak that rapidly spreads amongst a large number of people in a defined population. It usually spreads in two weeks or less.

The Ebola epidemic in West Africa killed 11,323 people during 2013 and 2016, and the SARS outbreak, which killed 744 people in 2003, are examples. Pandemic – A pandemic is a worldwide spread of a new infectious disease. It stretches over several countries or continents, infects more people, and causes more deaths than an epidemic. Examples of past pandemics include smallpox, tuberculosis and the bubonic plague, which killed more than 75 million people in 1350 and the swine flu, which killed more than 14,000 people in 2009. A pandemic can cause higher social disruptions, economic loss, and hardships. What is the worst-case scenario of a pandemic? Defining the potential magnitude of a pandemic is difficult because of the significant difference in severity for the three 20th century pandemics. While the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic resulted in an estimated 500,000 deaths in the U.S., the 1968 Hong Kong flu pandemic caused an estimated 34,000 U.S. deaths. This difference in pandemics relates to the virulence of the virus, exposure to previous similar strains, the severity of infection, and the underlying health of the general public. Predicting specific characteristics of a future pandemic virus is difficult. No one knows how pathogenic a new virus would be, and which age groups it would affect.

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The author is Administrative Assistant III at Division of City of San

Fernando, (P)