The Covid -19 epidemic has created a truly unprecedented situation which affects us all. Write a letter to the Editor of a national daily discussing how it has changed our lifestyle and what are the measures we need to take in the coming times ahead.
Answers
Answer:
No one knows whether avian flu will evolve into a human pandemic. It could, possibly, remain largely confined to bird populations and be remembered years hence as a scare that didn’t materialize. But little stands between the best- and worst-case scenarios.
So far, the H5N1 strain of avian flu has infected millions of birds, mostly in Asia, but now increasingly in Europe and Africa; it has spread, with difficulty, to fewer than 200 people—although it has killed more than half of them. And it is evolving in ways that appear to allow it to infect a greater number of species, including pigs, wild and domestic cats, and dogs. From its origin in southern China in 1997, H5N1 has spread to almost 50 countries (at the time of this writing) and is now circulating through Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. This advance, coupled with the emergence of mutations that may facilitate the infection across species, increases the risk of a global pandemic.
If the virus does mutate into a form that transmits easily from person to person—and this is the pivotal unknown—in the best case, the World Health Organization (WHO) says, 2 million people could die. In the worst case, according to some experts’ projections, up to 30% of the world’s population could be stricken over the course of roughly a year, resulting in as many as 150 million deaths and perhaps more than a billion people requiring medical care. It takes little imagination to envision the impact this could have on global business as employees fall ill, supply chains fragment, and services fail.
Should a pandemic emerge, it would become the single greatest threat to business continuity and could remain so for up to 18 months. Companies need to develop rigorous contingency plans to slow the progress of a pandemic and limit its impact on employees, shareholders, partners, consumers, and communities. This will require more than simply double-checking the soundness of existing business continuity plans.
As companies start to address pandemic preparedness, they are discovering that a pandemic is fundamentally different from other, more traditional business continuity threats and is outside the scope of issues typically considered by continuity planners. Plans are usually designed to help companies respond to localized threats—like fires, bombs, riots, earthquakes, and hurricanes—that affect infrastructure. Once the event has occurred, it is over and, while the effects may linger, recovery can begin. However, a pandemic isn’t an isolated incident. It is, by definition, an unfolding global event. Because of air travel, many cities around the world could be infected almost simultaneously.
Current models suggest that the next pandemic is likely to come in three waves, with each wave sweeping across the globe in a matter of weeks and lasting as long as three months. So there needs to be a shift in the nature of continuity planning, away from strategies that protect infrastructure and toward those that protect employees and their ability to conduct business during a sustained crisis.
When companies first began to wake up to the threat of avian flu, such strategies often revolved around trying to stockpile antiviral medication as a stopgap measure, with the expectation that in a pandemic a vaccine would soon become available. It is now clear that antivirals would be in short supply and that viral drug resistance would be likely to develop. What’s more, an effective vaccine may not be available in appreciable quantities for many months after a pandemic is under way, and then shortages and distribution problems could limit use. Contingency planning by forward-looking companies, therefore, is becoming more coordinated, headed by pandemic or crisis teams that tap principal functions, including human resources, operations, security, legal counsel, and communications. This planning focuses on nonmedical risk-mitigation strategies to reduce infection and maintain business continuity.
In doing their planning, businesses should look to the WHO’s six-phase pandemic-tracking model, which indicates the WHO’s assessment of the threat. We are now at phase three and have been for more than two years. (See “Tracking a Potential Pandemic” below.) Please mark the answer as the branliest and verified.
Answer:
sorry i am not very good in english