Having an engineering project to oversee in San Luis Potosi Mexico, I have a vested interest in the latest breakout of the Swine Flu. My problem is that San Luis or SLP for short, is in the middle of an outbreak of the killer bug, and the city has up their health warning to level 4, as the death total for the virus surpassed the 150 person mark. In conjunction, my company has suspended all travel to the country while the world gets a handle on the issue.
Yet, a much bigger problem looms in the horizon as the epidemic has now reached out past our southern border, and made its way onto the International scene. It is now reported that the resilient little bug has found its way into the United States, Canada, Britain the Middle East and Asia-Pacific regions, sending the World Health Organization (WHO) scrambling for a containment and eradication plan.
A spokesman for WHO has confirmed that in the US, high school students returning from a spring break trip to Mexico have contracted and spread the virus. WHO also confirmed that an additional case of the flu has been reported in the US. With the latest reports showing an outbreak of the virus in at least six different countries, the World Health Organization decided to raise its alert level to Phase 4.
While deaths attributed to the flu are not new in this country, there is a major concern that humans may not have natural immunities to fight off this latest strain that is a combination of pig, bird and human viruses.
In a worse case scenario , the US government has estimate that a large scale pandemic would infect over 90 million Americans, with nearly 10 million requiring some form of hospitalization. Such an outbreak would cause a problem in hospitals around the country, some of which are not equipped to handle the expected influx of patients.
Extending outside the health care industries, the pandemic would cause the closing of schools to prevent the further spreading of the illness. The US Economy could also be affected, as business would have to deal with a temporary shortage of labor, as well as restrictions on travel and shipping. It has been estimated that a severe pandemic could shrink U.S. output by about 5.5 percent.
Scrambling to find answers, the Obama Administration, in a statement made by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, “the U.S. is preparing as if the swine flu outbreak were a full pandemic.”
Michael Leavitt, the Secretary of Health and Human Services has added, "We have a playbook that was developed and is being followed," though "It's a substantially better picture than what we faced three years ago." Leavitt is the man who oversaw pandemic planning for President George W. Bush during the Bird Flu crisis of 2005.
It remains to be seen how the current Administration is able respond and contained this latest International crisis now threatening the US.
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