Swine Flu: The hidden enemy within

I have been in the US for the last week on vacation and was surprised by the news in the media that the H1N1 virus is starting to impact on a scale that has surprised many of the experts. This week 198 schools in 15 states have been closed due to absenteeism attributed to the H1N1 virus with more than 65,000 students now diagnosed with symptoms, up from 2,000 the week before. OK so this is the US and it is in the closed environments of schools – but what happens if we see a similar explosion of cases in the UK? What impact would it have?

In some modelling I did back in Royal Mail several years ago, we looked at what would happen if a virus was introduced into the UK by a foreign traveller landing at Stanstead airport. The results of the modelling suggested that up to 60% of the workforce would be affected within 10 – 15 days and it would have significant negative effects on the economy and life in general – schools and factories would close and availability of food etc. could be restricted.

OK, so the virus we modelled was more virulent than the H1N1 appears to be, so the timescales could be longer, and the effects might not be as widespread, but consider this – could you still operate if half your workforce was off sick next week?

I don’t mean this to be one more scare story but I strongly suggest that companies need to do some planning and look at a worse case scenario where 50% of the workforce is absent. This approach would allow at least an understanding of what the consequences could be and allow for some form of informed response to be put in place and a level of business continuity to be implemented.

Information and understanding is one of the most powerful weapons against such impacts.

A secondary impact we identified was the hostility to delivery people as they could be seen as carriers of the virus and we could see similar behaviours to those experienced with the anthrax scares a few years ago.

Do you have thoughts on this? Please comment below.