Appendix 6: Influenza Pandemic Preparedness & Response Plan
Assessment
The EMT, with additional input from other campus administrators or outside health officials, will need to assess the level of outbreak facing the campus. Key criteria for this assessment are:
- Number of individuals already affected and the level of their illness or exposure (e.g., actually ill or suspected of having the illness, exposed to the illness, possibly exposed to the illness);
- Number of students potentially affected, based on the best estimates of the impact the infected or exposed persons may yet have on the larger student population;
- Amount of time involved for the incubation of any exposure to have fully passed through the larger community; and
- Where the affected students live (e.g., University housing, private apartments). The former is far more susceptible to wide-scale infection than the latter.
There are two major distinctions in scale:
- Smaller scale involving the isolation of a small number of individuals, probably less than 20, which is roughly the number of cases the UCMC could isolate;
- Large scale involving the isolation and/or evacuation of numbers that outstrip the UCMC’s isolation facilities; and
- Large scale city-wide event that could result in the city or state taking control of University or UCMC resources (e.g., staff, buildings, supplies).
In the case of a small scale emergency, the operating principle will be to isolate the individuals in UCMC facilities as soon as possible.
