University's 'what-if' planning for bird flu in sync with new CDC guidelines

Recently released U.S. government guidelines for combating a potential avian flu pandemic closely resemble response strategies that have been under development by Harvard planners since October 2005.

Both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines - available online at http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/community/community_mitigation.pdf - and Harvard's ongoing "what-if" planning say that the best protection against a flu pandemic would be "social distancing," or limiting contact with people who are sick, and attending to personal hygiene, in particular, hand washing.

The CDC guidelines - developed to help U.S. communities create their own plans if there is a pandemic in the coming years - call for keeping people from congregating in buildings where the virus can spread easily from person to person. Specific actions would include closing schools, canceling public gatherings, instituting work leave policies, greatly increasing telecommuting, and isolating those who catch the virus and their close contacts.

"It's no surprise that Harvard's response mirrors the CDC guidelines; public health experts have long realized that an avian flu pandemic would require the use of social distancing measures," said David Rosenthal, director of University Health Services (UHS), and a member of the University's Incident Support Team (IST) that has been drafting potential responses to the avian flu. "If a pandemic occurred, the disease could spread far and fast with devastating consequences while we waited for an effective vaccine to be developed. The best protections would be the old standbys - limiting contact and attending to personal hygiene, especially hand washing."