Pandemic Preparedness: Infectious Disease Planning Assumptions

Infectious Disease Planning Assumptions

Length of Disruptions and Absenteeism

Medical experts have projected that 25% of people will get the virus in a full-scale pandemic. These are two of the possible levels of disruptions: short and medium-term, and long term.

Short and Medium Term Disruption

The percentage will be higher than 25% due to staff being away from their work to take care of family members, especially during quarantine or closure of schools.
Consider an estimation of 25% absenteeism as a “low estimate” for medium-term disruption.
In larger cities, this percentage may increase to 50% or more for short periods.

Long Term Disruption

In the event of a full pandemic, it is predicted that business will not return to normality for 6 to 18 months.
The best-case scenario is if the pandemic is relatively benign and handled effectively by national governments.
The worst-case scenario is the possibility of the large financial centres being moderately impacted.
A working assumption of a severe disruption lasting 12 months would be supportable.
There will be a huge reduction in international services such as tourism and offshore financial services.
Multiple Sites Disruptions

During an Infectious Disease outbreak, the situation would be unpredictable as more than one business location could be impacted.

Maintain Separation of Personnel9

Authorities will discourage a gathering or concentration of people so as to limit human-to-human transmission of the disease.

Decentralisation (reduce human-to-human contact) of critical personnel becomes mandatory i.e. autonomous decision making.

Ongoing IT Operations

Provided that the continued operation of key infrastructure (data centres, networks, and systems) be accorded the highest priority, the major problem is managing the people resources.

Disruption to Supply Chain

During an outbreak, one part of the world may be mildly affected, but it will impact their operations if their suppliers are in other countries that are severely affected by the outbreak.

One major concern for organisations is that the current supply chain and outsourcing arrangements may not operate at contracted service levels.

Organisations that are highly automated, ‘just in time’ value chains, outsourcing core activities to third parties will be seriously at risk.

Local Denial of Access

In developing the Infectious Disease BC plan, organisations should consider the following office closure scenario:

Staff affected by the Infectious Disease resulting in the closure of the
Staff members being quarantined for five days or more (subject to local health authorities’ guidance).
Office closed for one to three days for cleaning.

Duration of Recovery from Illness

If an employee recovers from the illness, the minimum recovery duration will be at least two weeks.

Effectiveness of Temperature Checking

It is important to understand that temperature taking is not a suitable method to detect an infection as a person could carry the virus for more than a day before any sign of fever appears.