Influenza Epidemic/ Pandemic
Topic Collection
October 17, 2024
Topic Collection: Influenza Epidemic/ Pandemic
In 2009, the world watched as the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus circulated the globe. Many emergency departments, clinics, and physician offices were filled with symptomatic patients and the “worried well” as public health and emergency management agencies modified plans to respond to the evolving pandemic by delivering risk communications to the public, establishing mass vaccination clinics, and distributing personal protective equipment (PPE) and other supplies to protect worker safety. Since that time, the healthcare system has been incorporating lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 response into continued pandemic influenza planning efforts. New technology in detection, advances in treatment, improved PPE and containment equipment, updated protocols on how to deal with highly infectious diseases, and experience responding to seasonal influenza outbreaks and other large-scale infectious disease outbreaks have all contributed to a more robust capability to respond to the next pandemic. The threats have also grown – an increasing number of novel influenza viruses have demonstrated the ability to occasionally infect humans. The resources included in this Topic Collection can help healthcare professionals and emergency medical planners prepare for the next influenza epidemic or pandemic. It is important to note how important strong healthcare coalitions with tiered response strategies and coordinated incident management are to an effective pandemic influenza response.
ASPR TRACIE has developed several additional Topic Collections with content relevant to specific aspects of epidemic and pandemic influenza planning; they are listed below.
Alternate Care Sites
Crisis Standards of Care
Disaster Ethics
Fatality Management
Healthcare-Related Disaster Legal/Regulatory/Federal Policy
Hospital Surge Capacity and Immediate Bed Availability
Mass Distribution and Dispensing of Medical Countermeasures
Pharmacy
Responder Safety and Health
Virtual Medical Care
Each resource in this Topic Collection is placed into one or more of the following categories (click on the category name to be taken directly to that set of resources). Resources marked with an asterisk (*) appear in more than one category.
Must Reads
This document provides an overview of clinical considerations for pandemic influenza, including sections on immunization, surveillance, reporting, prevention, diagnosis, testing indications and types, treatment, and isolation and quarantine. It also includes information on limiting transmission when managing patients at home.
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The authors analyzed surveillance data of hospitalized patients from the 2010-11 through the 2014-15 influenza seasons to determine the use of antiviral treatment. They found that antiviral treatment of hospitalized influenza patients increased from 72% in the 2010-11 season to 89% in the 2014-15 season. They also found that 45% of patients admitted within two days of illness onset, when the clinical benefit of antiviral treatment is known to be greatest, did not receive antiviral treatment on their day of admission.
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This planning tool is intended to assist healthcare coalitions (HCCs) and their partners in assessing their preparedness for an influenza pandemic. It may also be used to orient the response as a pandemic begins. This checklist can help HCCs assess, create, and improve their pandemic preparedness and response plans.
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This playbook (updated in 2023) synthesizes multiple sources of information in a single planning document addressing the full spectrum of infectious agents to create a concise reference resource for emergency medical services (EMS) agencies developing their service policies. The information can be incorporated into agency standard operating procedures and reviewed by the EMS medical director.
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This article describes a Department of Veterans Affairs feasibility study on the ability of personnel to safely disinfect respirators under pandemic conditions by following standard operating procedures.
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The authors reviewed the epidemiology and emergence of all influenza A serotypes known to cause human infection. They found an increase in recent years in the emergence of avian influenza viruses causing infections in humans and suggest a variety of measures to prevent the emergence of zoonotic disease.
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This tool was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other influenza experts to assess the risk of a human pandemic emerging from influenza A viruses currently circulating in animals. The IRAT uses 10 weighted evaluation criteria to assess the risk of both emergence and public health impact and to classify each virus as low, moderate, or high risk.
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This webpage lists commonly-asked questions about influenza and contrasts answers for seasonal influenza with pandemic influenza.
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This document provides infection control guidelines for healthcare settings across the continuum of care. It is intended to inform the development, implementation, and evaluation of infection control and prevention programs in healthcare settings.
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This supplement to Chest Journal includes several articles composing a consensus statement of the American College of Chest Physicians on the care of the critically ill and injured during pandemics and disasters. Individual articles focus on the following: Introduction and Executive Summary; Methodology; Surge Capacity Principles; Surge Capacity Logistics; Evacuation of the ICU; Triage; Special Populations; System-Level Planning, Coordination, and Communication; Business and Continuity of Operations; Engagement and Education; Legal Preparedness; Ethical Considerations; and Infrastructure and Capacity Building and Response, Recovery, and Research in Resource-Poor Settings.
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This report summarizes a series of workshops on the public’s perception of how to facilitate access to antiviral medication and treatment during an influenza pandemic.
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This article describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised framework for pandemic influenza preparedness and response. The authors describe the six intervals along the pandemic curve and eight domains used to organize efforts within each interval.
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This guide for infectious disease physician executives identifies service lines and related metrics to mitigate infectious disease-related issues. The guide addresses four areas: infection prevention and control; antimicrobial stewardship; outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy hospital admission/readmission avoidance; and bio-security, bio-preparedness, and emerging infectious diseases.
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The authors describe Taiwan’s Communicable Disease Control Medical Network, which was established after the 2003 SARS outbreak, and discuss its performance during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the West African Ebola outbreak. They discuss similarities with the tiered response system established in the U.S. for Ebola, identify strengths as the establishment of a command system with well-prepared hospitals and trained personnel, and note the challenges of maintaining funding, clarifying the role of local public health authorities, and incentivizing the participation of frontline clinical staff.
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This document provides guidelines to hospitals to prepare for an influenza pandemic. It includes a summary of recommended actions and their triggers, checklists, sample response guides, general background information, and links to additional resources.
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This toolkit is intended for use by hospital emergency departments, and tests how long it takes for a potential patient with a highly infectious disease to be identified and for staff to begin exposure mitigation procedures; how long it takes for a patient to be transferred to an isolation room; and the capability of the facility to make notifications internally and to the health department. The Toolkit includes scenarios for Ebola Virus Disease, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and Measles, but may be modified to suit healthcare facilities of any nature and any type of disease outbreak.
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The authors provide an overview of influenza and discuss epidemiology and surveillance, perspectives on vaccines and antivirals, and research opportunities related to universal vaccine, alternate vaccine production strategies, novel antiviral development, and continued transmission studies.
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This fact sheet provides guidance on workplace practices related to pandemic influenza.
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These guidelines update Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations on the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of infectious respiratory diseases, including influenza.
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This article describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s framework for classifying pandemic severity. The authors describe the four-step process used to develop the framework and how it can be used for an initial assessment in the early stages of a pandemic and a refined assessment once additional data become available.
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The authors review influenza pandemics throughout history to describe the changing knowledge of the virus and efforts to manage outbreaks. Given the unpredictable nature of when the next pandemic will occur, they encourage continued surveillance, coordination, and resource planning to mitigate risks.
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The authors reviewed literature published through 2015 to identify factors influencing adherence to antivirals as prophylaxis or treatment for influenza, both seasonal and pandemic. The incidence of adverse side effects was the most common predictor of actual and intended adherence. Other predictive factors include knowledge about influenza risk factors, risk perceptions on the severity of and vulnerability to the outbreak, and beliefs about side effects or effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. These findings can inform both conversations between providers and individual patients and the development of public risk communication campaigns.
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This report examines early lessons learned by the healthcare system from the response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and highlights ongoing concerns about overall U.S. preparedness for potential outbreaks.
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This updated plan builds upon the 2005 Pandemic Influenza Plan and its subsequent updates, focusing on the seven domains of: surveillance, epidemiology, and laboratory activities; community mitigation measures; medical countermeasures; health care system preparedness and response activities; communications and public outreach; scientific infrastructure and preparedness; and domestic and international response policy, incident management, and global partnerships and capacity building.
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This document provides recommendations, best practices and principles for infection prevention and control for acute respiratory infections in health care, particularly those that present as epidemics or pandemics. It includes information on PPE and aerosol-generating procedures. There are also summaries of literature and research reviews on physical interventions for infection control; risk of transmission from aerosol-generating procedures; and effectiveness of vaccination of health care workers to protect patients.
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Antiviral Treatment
The authors analyzed surveillance data of hospitalized patients from the 2010-11 through the 2014-15 influenza seasons to determine the use of antiviral treatment. They found that antiviral treatment of hospitalized influenza patients increased from 72% in the 2010-11 season to 89% in the 2014-15 season. They also found that 45% of patients admitted within two days of illness onset, when the clinical benefit of antiviral treatment is known to be greatest, did not receive antiviral treatment on their day of admission.
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This report provides recommendations for treatment and chemoprophylaxis of influenza virus infection. The authors identify populations at greater risk of complications, identify major changes from previous recommendations, describe the mechanism of virus transmission and the clinical signs and symptoms of disease, outline the role of laboratory diagnostics, and provide information on the four approved influenza antiviral agents, including their usage, dosage, adverse events, drug interactions, and possible emergency use authorization.
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This document provides information on antiviral medications recommended for treatment and chemoprophylaxis of influenza, summarizes influenza antiviral treatment recommendations, identifies treatment considerations for patients hospitalized with suspected or confirmed influenza, describes diagnostic testing for influenza, lists recommended dosage and duration of various antiviral agents for pediatric and adult populations, discusses chemoprophylaxis, and highlights special considerations.
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The authors reviewed individual patient data from nine clinical trials comparing oseltamivir with a placebo as a treatment for seasonal influenza in adults. They found that oseltamivir reduced the time to symptom alleviation, the risk of lower respiratory tract complications, and risk of hospitalization, but increased the risk of nausea and vomiting.
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This report summarizes a series of workshops on the public’s perception of how to facilitate access to antiviral medication and treatment during an influenza pandemic.
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The authors reviewed regulatory information from 46 trials of oseltamivir and zanamivir for influenza in adults and children. They found that oseltamivir and zanamivir reduce the time to symptom improvement in adults with influenza-like illness. Neither oseltamivir nor zanamivir was found to reduce influenza complications, hospitalizations, or deaths. Oseltamivir increases the risk of nausea, vomiting, and psychiatric events in adults and vomiting in children, but may reduce the risk of diarrhea and cardiac events in adults. The authors found a minimal preventive effect of using oseltamivir or zanamivir as prophylaxis.
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The authors discuss the debate about whether oseltamivir should be stockpiled for an influenza pandemic based on its performance in the treatment of relatively mild illness during seasonal influenza outbreaks.
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The authors reviewed available data from randomized, placebo-controlled trials on adults and children with confirmed or suspected exposure to naturally-occurring influenza to determine the effects of neuraminidase inhibitors. They found that two commonly-stockpiled neuraminidase inhibitors – oseltamivir and zanamivir – reduce the time to alleviation of symptoms in adults and that prophylactic use of either drug reduces the risk of developing symptomatic influenza. Neither drug reduced the time to alleviation of symptoms in asthmatic children, and oseltamivir use increased the risk of nausea, vomiting, psychiatric effects, and renal events in adults and vomiting in children.
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This systematic review of randomized and controlled trials and other relevant literature concludes that the benefits of antiviral drugs outweigh their risks. The article summarizes existing public health recommendations and examines research on antiviral prophylaxis and treatment. The authors encourage clinicians to consider the risk profile of patients in some at-risk populations and note the need for additional research on those populations and on the use of antivirals for highly pathogenic influenza viruses.
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The authors reviewed literature published through 2015 to identify factors influencing adherence to antivirals as prophylaxis or treatment for influenza, both seasonal and pandemic. The incidence of adverse side effects was the most common predictor of actual and intended adherence. Other predictive factors include knowledge about influenza risk factors, risk perceptions on the severity of and vulnerability to the outbreak, and beliefs about side effects or effectiveness of pharmaceuticals. These findings can inform both conversations between providers and individual patients and the development of public risk communication campaigns.
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The authors review the literature on the use of peramivir for acute influenza treatment. They found that it is effective against a variety of influenza A and B subtypes and that its injectable form may be favorable for treating critically ill, hospitalized patients. While they found positive results in observational studies in pregnant women, pediatric patients, patients receiving continuous renal replacement therapy, and patients undergoing extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, there is a lack of clinical trials demonstrating the efficacy of peramivir in these populations.
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Avian Influenza
This website contains information on highly pathogenic avian influenza, including the latest news and information for livestock producers and veterinarians, such as testing recommendations for cattle. It also includes biosecurity, CDC, and FDA resources and information on farm loans for agricultural producers to enact biosecurity measures (e.g., installing physical barriers, purchasing disinfectant, or veterinary costs).
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This document provides healthcare providers and emergency planners with resource links to improve their readiness for potential human infections with avian influenza A viruses. Users should refer to the websites of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and the World Health Organization (WHO) for the most up-to-date information.
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These interim recommendations outline steps for preventing exposure to avian influenza viruses, including recommendations for the public, farmers, workers, clinicians, and state health departments on surveillance and testing. The webpage defines exposure to avian influenza-infected birds, clinical and public health response criteria, information on collecting clinical specimens for testing, influenza antiviral treatment, and avian influenza chemoprophylaxis.
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This paper examines the state of knowledge of biosecurity in relation to highly pathogenic avian influenza H5N1 and presents issues and options for the domestic poultry and captive bird sectors.
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The authors conducted a systematic literature review to identify practices associated with human infections of avian influenza, their prevalence, and rationale. They found that both direct and indirect exposure to poultry were associated with infection with all virus subtypes and all settings and that association with infection was stronger in markets than households, for sick and dead than healthy poultry, and for H7N9 than H5N1.
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The supplement contains a number of articles on avian and other animal influenza viruses of concern to humans.
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The authors analyzed data on laboratory-confirmed Asian lineage HPAI H5N1, H5N6, and H7N9 and found that epidemiologic characteristics and severity of infections of A(H5N6) were similar to those of A(H5N1) and more severe than A(H7N9).
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This study examined 907 human cases of avian influenza A H5N1 from May 1997 to April 2015 to describe changes in global epidemiology. The authors describe an expansion in the number of affected countries from east and southeast Asia west through Asia to Africa. The authors noted a recent increase in cases in Egypt but found no significant differences in comparison to earlier cases in epidemiological factors such as fatality risk, history of patient contact or exposure to poultry, and time from illness onset to hospital admission.
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This article discusses clinical presentation of avian influenza infection, species barriers, susceptibility, and risk factors for human infection. It also contains information on zoonotic avian influenza A viruses, and details on specific subtypes. The authors discuss pandemic mitigation strategies such as close World Health Organization monitoring of select strains, vaccination, antiviral drugs, and the limitations of these measures.
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This article discusses past epidemics of avian influenza A(H7N9) virus associated with live poultry markets, and Chinese officials’ efforts to respond quickly and control outbreaks. The authors review characteristics of the virus identified during these efforts, including molecular epidemiology, clinical aspects, virulence, pathogenesis, treatment, and vaccine development with the goal of decreasing the risks of H7N9 and other viruses such as SARS-CoV-2 in the future.
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Lycett, S., Duchatel, F., and Digard, P. (2019).
A Brief History of Bird Flu.
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 374(1775):20180257.
This article reviews what is known as of 2018 about avian influenza A and its genetic makeup, from its relationship with the 1918 H1N1 pandemic strain, to epidemics in birds, to zoonoses. The authors describe the virus’s origin, reassortment, and evolution of avian influenza. Finally, the article describes the ongoing risk to human health and how control in domestic bird populations can mitigate the risks.
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This document gives recommendations for influenza virus surveillance, monitoring, early detection, case investigation, and reporting when humans and animals interact. It distinguishes between animal influenza viruses which are not transmitted to or between humans, human seasonal influenza viruses, and zoonotic influenza viruses which can cause illness and death in humans. The document also discusses the reporting obligations under the International Health Regulations of 2005 for states party to them.
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This article discusses symptoms of infection with avian influenza A viruses, characteristics of testing for influenza A virus, and clinical management of influenza A. It provides background on the epidemiology of avian influenza A, exposure risk factors, human-to-human transmission, and pathogenesis.
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This document provides guidance for countries experiencing influenza outbreaks in animals, and incorporates information from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the World Organization for Animal Health. It includes sections on the role of the animal health sector, risk communication, messages on poultry culling, food and water safety, zoonotic influenza surveillance, and clinical management of suspected and confirmed cases.
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This website contains information on the global impact of avian influenza on the poultry industry, farmers’ livelihoods, international trade, and the health of wild birds. It includes background on avian influenza, its transmission and spread among wild and domestic bird populations, and the public health risk posed by these viruses.
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This article examines the history of avian influenza H7N9, including five epidemics in China and the knowledge gained in 6 years of management of H7N9 on virus tracing, epidemiology, mutation monitoring, etiology of the disease, clinical management, and vaccine development.
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Education, Training, and Exercises
This guide is part of a toolkit that can help emergency planners create an interactive, discussion-based exercise focusing on impacts to healthcare coalition and healthcare facilities caused by large numbers of patients seeking healthcare following exposure to an infectious agent.
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This instructional series, comprised of nine modules (listed at the top of the page), includes an introduction to infectious diseases, basic infection control concepts, considerations for personal protective equipment (including donning and doffing), personnel decontamination, patient transport, and transfer of patient care for patients with Ebola and other highly infectious diseases.
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This is a four-day course for emergency medical services, healthcare, and public health professionals who may triage, transport, and treat those with a highly infectious disease. Training includes guided discussions of best practices, demonstrations, practical experiences, and exercises.
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These guidelines are intended as a quick reference for just-in-time training and set up of the types of mechanical ventilators included in the Strategic National Stockpile. The guidelines may be used by clinicians with a baseline knowledge of pulmonary physiology and the concepts of ventilation, but who may not be familiar with the stockpiled ventilators or who may not routinely care for children on ventilators.
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The authors studied the feasibility and effectiveness of an interactive, computer-assisted training course designed to build resilience to the stresses of working during a pandemic. They measured confidence in support and training; pandemic-related self-efficacy; coping style; and interpersonal problems, before and after training, and found that the course was associated with improvement in each variable, with the “medium” duration course providing the greatest benefit. The course is free and may be accessed at https://www.msh-healthyminds.com/sv/.
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This toolkit is intended for use by hospital emergency departments, and tests how long it takes for a potential patient with a highly infectious disease to be identified and for staff to begin exposure mitigation procedures; how long it takes for a patient to be transferred to an isolation room; and the capability of the facility to make notifications internally and to the health department. The Toolkit includes scenarios for Ebola Virus Disease, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and Measles, but may be modified to suit healthcare facilities of any nature and any type of disease outbreak.
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This webpage contains links to four free toolkits that were developed to provide healthcare providers immediate access to key infectious disease outbreak information and resources. The toolkits contain guidance on incident management, emerging pathogens, IPC strategies, COVID-19, communication, negotiation, and implementation. Each toolkit contains checklists, guidance documents, case studies, and fillable tables to meet the planning and response needs prior to or during an infectious disease outbreak.
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Though this guide was developed to support countries in their design and conduct of pandemic influenza exercises, the detailed guidance on scenario elements and exercise evaluation may be valuable to healthcare emergency planners at the state and local level, as well as in the healthcare facility setting.
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Epidemiology and Surveillance
The authors describe a method for predicting the likely impact of an emerging influenza pandemic based on an analysis of data at the household level collected from the first few hundred cases.
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The authors reviewed the epidemiology and emergence of all influenza A serotypes known to cause human infection. They found an increase in recent years in the emergence of avian influenza viruses causing infections in humans and suggest a variety of measures to prevent the emergence of zoonotic disease.
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This tool was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other influenza experts to assess the risk of a human pandemic emerging from influenza A viruses currently circulating in animals. The IRAT uses 10 weighted evaluation criteria to assess the risk of both emergence and public health impact and to classify each virus as low, moderate, or high risk.
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This article describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised framework for pandemic influenza preparedness and response. The authors describe the six intervals along the pandemic curve and eight domains used to organize efforts within each interval.
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The authors provide an overview of influenza and discuss epidemiology and surveillance, perspectives on vaccines and antivirals, and research opportunities related to universal vaccine, alternate vaccine production strategies, novel antiviral development, and continued transmission studies.
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The authors review influenza pandemics throughout history to describe the changing knowledge of the virus and efforts to manage outbreaks. Given the unpredictable nature of when the next pandemic will occur, they encourage continued surveillance, coordination, and resource planning to mitigate risks.
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Using electronic medical claims data from 2003 to 2010, the authors found that influenza-like illness indicators accurately reflected weekly fluctuations in influenza activity. They suggest that electronic medical claims data can supplement surveillance systems and can be used to provide situational awareness, refine influenza transmission models, and support future pandemic responses.
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General Information
This document provides an overview of clinical considerations for pandemic influenza, including sections on immunization, surveillance, reporting, prevention, diagnosis, testing indications and types, treatment, and isolation and quarantine. It also includes information on limiting transmission when managing patients at home.
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This webpage lists commonly-asked questions about influenza and contrasts answers for seasonal influenza with pandemic influenza.
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This supplement to Chest Journal includes several articles composing a consensus statement of the American College of Chest Physicians on the care of the critically ill and injured during pandemics and disasters. Individual articles focus on the following: Introduction and Executive Summary; Methodology; Surge Capacity Principles; Surge Capacity Logistics; Evacuation of the ICU; Triage; Special Populations; System-Level Planning, Coordination, and Communication; Business and Continuity of Operations; Engagement and Education; Legal Preparedness; Ethical Considerations; and Infrastructure and Capacity Building and Response, Recovery, and Research in Resource-Poor Settings.
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Ghebrehewet, S., MacPherson, P., and Ho, A. (2016).
Influenza.
BMJ. 355.
This web page provides basic information on influenza, including what it is, what the symptoms are, how it is diagnosed and treated, and how epidemics and pandemics occur.
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This article provides a chronology and describes the evolution of pandemic planning since the 1970s.
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The authors provide an overview of influenza and describe the viral, host, and bacterial factors that contribute to more severe illness, complications, and mortality.
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The authors review influenza and respiratory bacterial co-infections, describing the historic understanding of such co-infections, disease dynamics and mechanisms, and prevention and treatment strategies.
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The authors review current disease preparedness and response practices at airports in the U.S. and Canada with a focus on coordination with public health officers and partners. The emphasize that while larger (international) airports are more likely to face these challenges, the lessons in this document are applicable to the aviation sector as a whole, including smaller airports (which may be the final destination of some travelers with communicable diseases).
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The authors provide an overview of influenza and discuss epidemiology and surveillance, perspectives on vaccines and antivirals, and research opportunities related to universal vaccine, alternate vaccine production strategies, novel antiviral development, and continued transmission studies.
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This article describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s framework for classifying pandemic severity. The authors describe the four-step process used to develop the framework and how it can be used for an initial assessment in the early stages of a pandemic and a refined assessment once additional data become available.
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The authors review influenza pandemics throughout history to describe the changing knowledge of the virus and efforts to manage outbreaks. Given the unpredictable nature of when the next pandemic will occur, they encourage continued surveillance, coordination, and resource planning to mitigate risks.
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Guidance
This document provides interim guidance for clinicians on how to identify, diagnose, report, and manage suspect cases of exposure to variant influenza viruses.
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This webpage provides guidance to long-term care facilities on preventing transmission of influenza through vaccination, testing, infection control, antiviral treatment, and antiviral chemoprophylaxis.
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This webpage provides guidance on avian influenza A (H7N9), Asian H5N1, and newly detected avian influenza H5 viruses in the U.S.
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This bench book provides Florida judges with information they need for when they are presented with public health cases. The document begins with an introduction of public health law in the context of a public health emergency, executive powers in a public health emergency, and Florida Executive Branch procedures in an emergency. It then goes into the role of Florida Courts, and other legal issues for the Courts to consider during a public health emergency. It also provides guidance for maintaining essential court functions during a pandemic.
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This document provides guidance for emergency departments and outpatient clinics to develop screening and isolation protocols for patients possibly infected with a highly communicable disease of public health concern. The document focuses on initial patient identification, initial infection control measures, notification and patient evaluation, and identification and management of exposed persons.
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This policy paper is intended for professionals in a care giver or service provider role. It includes guidance on ethical principles in emergency care, meeting usual care expectations, and recommendations for emergency event care.
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This is a summary of a guidance document based on extensive federal interagency coordination and stakeholder input and designed to help those who work in healthcare facilities, medical transportation operations, and laboratories better understand infectious waste and how to manage it. Access the full report at https://www.phmsa.dot.gov/sites/phmsa.dot.gov/files/docs/transporting-infectious-substances/6821/cat-waste-planning-guidance-final-2019-08.pdf.
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Based on extensive federal interagency coordination and stakeholder input, the guidance in this document can help those who work in healthcare facilities, medical transportation operations, and laboratories better understand infectious waste and how to manage it.
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Guidelines
These guidelines review data on handwashing and hand antisepsis in healthcare settings and provide recommendations for the promotion of hand hygiene practices and the reduction of pathogen transmission in healthcare settings.
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This report provides recommendations for treatment and chemoprophylaxis of influenza virus infection. The authors identify populations at greater risk of complications, identify major changes from previous recommendations, describe the mechanism of virus transmission and the clinical signs and symptoms of disease, outline the role of laboratory diagnostics, and provide information on the four approved influenza antiviral agents, including their usage, dosage, adverse events, drug interactions, and possible emergency use authorization.
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This webpage provides background information on the reliability and interpretation of rapid influenza diagnostic test results, guidance on how to minimize false results, lists details about available testing methods, and describes characteristics of rapid influenza diagnostic tests.
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This webpage defines healthcare settings and healthcare personnel, discusses modes of influenza transmission and fundamental elements of prevention; and outlines 13 recommended prevention strategies.
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This document provides infection control guidelines for healthcare settings across the continuum of care. It is intended to inform the development, implementation, and evaluation of infection control and prevention programs in healthcare settings.
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This webpage includes links to current and archived influenza vaccine recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
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These guidelines are intended as a quick reference for just-in-time training and set up of the types of mechanical ventilators included in the Strategic National Stockpile. The guidelines may be used by clinicians with a baseline knowledge of pulmonary physiology and the concepts of ventilation, but who may not be familiar with the stockpiled ventilators or who may not routinely care for children on ventilators.
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This guide for infectious disease physician executives identifies service lines and related metrics to mitigate infectious disease-related issues. The guide addresses four areas: infection prevention and control; antimicrobial stewardship; outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy hospital admission/readmission avoidance; and bio-security, bio-preparedness, and emerging infectious diseases.
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The authors review current evidence and indications for ECMO. They describe what it is, who could benefit, how to do it, and what the complications are. ECMO was used extensively during the H1N1 pandemic, and the guide has implications on decisions for its use during future influenza pandemics.
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This protocol developed by an expert panel is based on a literature review and the experience of Polish treatment centers with extensive use of veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). The protocol is intended to improve treatment outcomes, expand access to ECMO where appropriate, and to avoid the use of ECMO in situations when it is unlikely to be beneficial.
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This document provides pandemic influenza guidelines for emergency medical services responders and management, recommended actions during each pandemic period, and additional resources, such as infection control information, employee health considerations, and patient assessment tools.
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This document provides guidelines to hospitals to prepare for an influenza pandemic. It includes a summary of recommended actions and their triggers, checklists, sample response guides, general background information, and links to additional resources.
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These model procedural guidelines, created by NETEC's EMS/Patient Transport Work Group, are designed to help EMS agencies develop standard operating procedures for the transport and management of patients suspected or confirmed to have a high-consequence infectious disease. The guidelines address personal protective equipment (PPE) donning and doffing, EMS provider down, PPE breaches, biohazard spills, waste management, ambulance modification, and ambulance cleaning and disinfection. They complement ASPR TRACIE's EMS Infectious Disease Playbook (https://files.asprtracie.hhs.gov/documents/aspr-tracie-transport-playbook-508.pdf).
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These guidelines update Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations on the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of infectious respiratory diseases, including influenza.
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This article describes the various approaches currently available to diagnose human influenza infections. The authors discuss advantages and limitations of the various approaches, such as sensitivity and specificity of the tests, cost-effectiveness, and ease to perform.
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This report reviews gaps in influenza pandemic preparedness among emergency medical services and 911 systems and outlines five strategies to address these gaps.
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This document provides recommendations, best practices and principles for infection prevention and control for acute respiratory infections in health care, particularly those that present as epidemics or pandemics. It includes information on PPE and aerosol-generating procedures. There are also summaries of literature and research reviews on physical interventions for infection control; risk of transmission from aerosol-generating procedures; and effectiveness of vaccination of health care workers to protect patients.
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Lessons Learned
Speakers share lessons learned in infection prevention and control from the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The authors describe Taiwan’s Communicable Disease Control Medical Network, which was established after the 2003 SARS outbreak, and discuss its performance during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the West African Ebola outbreak. They discuss similarities with the tiered response system established in the U.S. for Ebola, identify strengths as the establishment of a command system with well-prepared hospitals and trained personnel, and note the challenges of maintaining funding, clarifying the role of local public health authorities, and incentivizing the participation of frontline clinical staff.
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This case study describes the collaboration between the Palm Beach County (FL) Health Department and the medical and hospital community, responding partners, and community pharmacies that facilitated a mass influenza vaccination campaign during the H1N1 influenza outbreak in 2009. The partnership enabled information and vaccines to flow from the health department to hundreds of area supermarkets and community pharmacies and their in-store health clinics, ensuring the public had access to credible and timely influenza information.
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The authors share lessons learned from the 2009 influenza pandemic, grouped into the following categories: surveillance, mitigation measures, vaccination, and communications and education.
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The authors describe lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic related to the commercial supply chain of pharmaceutical and other healthcare products. They discuss how these lessons learned could inform readiness for future emergencies from a personal protective equipment supply chain and system perspective.
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The authors share lessons learned from recent outbreaks that can be incorporated into planning efforts for future public health emergencies.
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This report shares the Panel's perspective on the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies lessons learned, and offers recommendations to prevent future pandemics.
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This report examines early lessons learned by the healthcare system from the response to the 2009 H1N1 pandemic and highlights ongoing concerns about overall U.S. preparedness for potential outbreaks.
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The U.S. Government Accountability Office was charged with 1) determining how the Homeland Security Council and the responsible Federal agencies were monitoring the progress and completion of the Implementation Plan for the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza, and 2) assessing the extent to which selected action items have been completed.
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This webpage provides links to all of the Government Accountability Office's reports related to the federal response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also included is a downloadable spreadsheet of recommendations.
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Non-Pharmaceutical Strategies
The authors describe the development of guidance on non-pharmaceutical strategies to minimize the spread of the 2009 influenza A (H1N1) pandemic. They recommend a framework to be used by state and local health officials when collaborating with stakeholders including educational officials and large employers to select which non-pharmaceutical measures to use during a future pandemic.
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The authors conducted systematic reviews of available evidence on the effectiveness of various social distancing measures in non-healthcare settings in reducing influenza transmission. The measures reviewed were: isolating ill persons, contact tracing, quarantined of those exposed, school dismissals or closures, workplace measures or closures, and avoiding crowding.
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The authors examined 19 categories of public health responses in 17 cities during the first 16 weeks of the 1918 influenza pandemic to determine their effectiveness. They found that early interventions were most effective in lowering peak death rates and that early closures of schools, churches, and theatres were associated with lower peak excess death rates.
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The authors modeled various non-pharmaceutical interventions, social behaviors, and their interactions on outcome measures such as numbers of contacts, infections, and deaths to simulate the effects of the strategies on pandemic influenza outbreaks with varying levels of virus transmissibility.
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The authors provide an overview of influenza and discuss epidemiology and surveillance, perspectives on vaccines and antivirals, and research opportunities related to universal vaccine, alternate vaccine production strategies, novel antiviral development, and continued transmission studies.
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These guidelines update Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendations on the use of non-pharmaceutical interventions to slow the spread of infectious respiratory diseases, including influenza.
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The authors completed systematic reviews of nonpharmaceutical interventions related to international travel and movement for evidence of effectiveness against pandemic influenza. Measures studied were screening travelers for infection, travel restrictions, and border closures.
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The authors modeled the effects on hospital capacity in one city of various strategies to control an influenza pandemic. They calculated ranges bounded by no interventions and all interventions for the attack rate, peak acute care hospital capacity, peak intensive care unit capacity, and mortality along with estimated economic burdens. They found vaccination, isolation, and personal protective measures to be the most effective strategies. However, all interventions decreased in effectiveness as transmissibility increased and as the outbreak progressed.
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This study reviews existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses on pandemic influenza interventions including vaccines, antivirals, personal protective measures, school closures, and traditional Chinese medicine. Pandemic influenza vaccine was found to be protective against infection, but the authors found insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of each of the other interventions in isolation and hypothesized that a combination of interventions would be most effective.
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In this case-control study of illnesses during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, the authors evaluated the effectiveness of frequency of hand washing, alcohol-based hand sanitizer use, and hand washing after touching contaminated surfaces. Hand washing more than five times per day was the only statistically significant protective factor. Among the school-age 5-17 year old group, both hand washing more than five times per day and hand washing after touching contaminated surfaces had a negative association for influenza infection.
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The authors completed systematic reviews of the effectiveness of personal protective and environmental measures in reducing influenza transmission. Measures studied were: hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, face masks, and surface and object cleaning.
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The authors modeled the effect of voluntary self-isolation when distribution of antivirals is delayed and found that it reduced the transmission of pandemic influenza. Voluntary self-isolation is more effective the closer in time to symptom onset it is implemented and loses effectiveness as the proportion of asymptomatic infections increases.
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Pediatric Issues
This resource kit was designed to address issues that occurred during 2009 H1N1 planning and allows for pediatricians, public health leaders, and other pediatric care providers to assess what is already happening in their community or state, and help determine what needs to be done before an emergency or disaster. It promotes collaborative discussions and decision making about pediatric preparedness planning at the local and state level and encourages integration of pediatric providers into disaster planning. It also contains a link to the Joint Policy Statement—Guidelines for Care of Children in the Emergency Department, as well as a Preparedness Checklist for Pediatric Practices and guidance for prioritizing vaccination during pandemics.
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This workbook was designed to assist hospitals in coordinating the care of pediatric patients during an influenza pandemic. The workbook guides hospitals in thinking about needed actions to inform their preparedness planning. NOTE: This resource is outdated, however it provides useful information that may still be relevant.
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These guidelines are intended as a quick reference for just-in-time training and set up of the types of mechanical ventilators included in the Strategic National Stockpile. The guidelines may be used by clinicians with a baseline knowledge of pulmonary physiology and the concepts of ventilation, but who may not be familiar with the stockpiled ventilators or who may not routinely care for children on ventilators.
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This cohort study to compare influenza outcomes of infants less than 6 months of age born to vaccinated and unvaccinated women included more than 245,000 women who delivered nearly 250,000 infants in a single health system between December 2005 and March 2014. The authors found that while only 10% of pregnant women were vaccinated during the overall course of the study, the proportion steadily increased to 52% in the final season. They also found a 64% reduction in influenza-like illness health encounters, a 70% reduction in laboratory-confirmed influenza, and an 81% reduction in hospitalization with laboratory-confirmed influenza in infants born to women who reported being vaccinated during pregnancy and 97% of laboratory-confirmed influenza in infants less than 6 month occurred in those born to women who did not report being vaccinated during pregnancy.
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In this case-control study of illnesses during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons, the authors evaluated the effectiveness of frequency of hand washing, alcohol-based hand sanitizer use, and hand washing after touching contaminated surfaces. Hand washing more than five times per day was the only statistically significant protective factor. Among the school-age 5-17 year old group, both hand washing more than five times per day and hand washing after touching contaminated surfaces had a negative association for influenza infection.
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Personal Protective Equipment and Worker Safety
This article describes a Department of Veterans Affairs feasibility study on the ability of personnel to safely disinfect respirators under pandemic conditions by following standard operating procedures.
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This web page provides questions and answers to illustrate the importance of influenza vaccination among healthcare workers to not only protect vaccinated personnel but also to reduce transmission of influenza in healthcare settings.
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The authors examined existing policies and guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the World Health Organization, three high-income countries, and six low/middle-income countries on mask and respirator use for influenza, SARS, and tuberculosis. They found significant variation in choice of products, applications, and specifications. They encourage joint evaluation of evidence and development of a uniform policy to reduce confusion in healthcare settings.
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This article reviews scientific findings on the extended use or reuse of filtering facepiece respirators in healthcare settings. The authors discuss considerations for routine events versus during public health emergencies. The authors express a preference for extended use over reuse and suggest that future recommendations consider new cautions and limitations.
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The author provides an overview on occupational exposure to emerging infectious diseases in the healthcare industry and the history and use of isolation gowns as personal protective equipment (PPE). As the second-most used type of PPE, the author discusses properties affecting gown performance and factors influencing their design and development.
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This report was updated following the 2009 H1N1 pandemic to assess current knowledge on personal protective equipment, research progress, and future efforts to protect healthcare personnel.
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The authors exposed material coupons and straps from four models of N95 filtering facepiece respirators to a range of doses of ultraviolet germicidal irradiation to test particle penetration, flow resistance, bursting strengths of coupon layers, and breaking strength of straps. They found small effects on filtration performance and almost no effect on flow resistance, but a reduction in the strength of respirator materials of more than 90% in some models and a 20-51% reduction in breaking strength of straps. The authors suggest that ultraviolet germicidal irradiation is a possible method to disinfect respirators for reuse, but the respirator model used should first be tested to determine the maximum number of disinfection cycles and the dose required to inactivate the specific pathogen.
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This report summarizes the proceedings of a workshop examining the current state of practice on the use of powered air purifying respirators in healthcare settings and research on their use and effectiveness.
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This report examines strategies for and pros and cons related to stockpiling and reusing elastomeric respirators during an influenza pandemic or other large aerosol-transmissible outbreak.
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This website compiles standards information for personal protective equipment from the U.S. government, American National Standards Institute-accredited standard development organizations, and the International Organization for Standardization. Users can search the database by fields including the category of personal protective equipment, hazard type, standard type, and standard organization.
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Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (n.d.).
Respiratory Protection.
(Accessed 9/9/2024.) U.S. Department of Labor.
This webpage contains standards on respirators, respiratory protection, and the medical evaluation program.
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This document provides an overview of infection control and other standards appropriate for pandemic influenza.
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This fact sheet provides guidance on workplace practices related to pandemic influenza.
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The authors describe lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic and the 2014 Ebola virus epidemic related to the commercial supply chain of pharmaceutical and other healthcare products. They discuss how these lessons learned could inform readiness for future emergencies from a personal protective equipment supply chain and system perspective.
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The authors described a survey of infectious disease physicians to learn their perspectives on influenza transmission, personal protective equipment preferences, respirator supplies, barriers to expanded use of respirators, and respirator conservation strategies. Among the findings, respondents widely agreed with recommendations to use surgical masks during seasonal influenza outbreaks. They slightly favored N95 respirators during mild severity pandemics, but two-thirds preferred N95 respirators over surgical masks during a high mortality pandemic. They also preferred extended use or reuse of disposable N95 respirators over elastomeric or powered air-purifying respirators in the event of a respirator shortage.
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This meta-analysis examined the effectiveness of hand hygiene, respiratory etiquette, and use of facemasks in reducing the risk of pandemic influenza transmission. The authors did not find data on the effectiveness of respiratory etiquette, but found that hand hygiene was statistically significant and wearing a face mask was suggestive of preventing infection.
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The authors conducted a meta-analysis of both clinical studies and surrogate exposure studies comparing N95 respirators to surgical masks to prevent transmission of acute respiratory infections. While the surrogate studies suggested a protective advantage of N95 respirators over surgical masks, the meta-analysis showed insufficient data to definitely determine whether N95 respirators are more protective.
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Plans, Tools, and Templates: EMS
This planning tool is intended to assist healthcare coalitions (HCCs) and their partners in assessing their preparedness for an influenza pandemic. It may also be used to orient the response as a pandemic begins. This checklist can help HCCs assess, create, and improve their pandemic preparedness and response plans.
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This playbook (updated in 2023) synthesizes multiple sources of information in a single planning document addressing the full spectrum of infectious agents to create a concise reference resource for emergency medical services (EMS) agencies developing their service policies. The information can be incorporated into agency standard operating procedures and reviewed by the EMS medical director.
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This planning checklist is intended to assist emergency medical services and other transport providers assess and improve their influenza pandemic preparedness.
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This document provides pandemic influenza guidelines for emergency medical services responders and management, recommended actions during each pandemic period, and additional resources, such as infection control information, employee health considerations, and patient assessment tools.
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These model procedural guidelines, created by NETEC's EMS/Patient Transport Work Group, are designed to help EMS agencies develop standard operating procedures for the transport and management of patients suspected or confirmed to have a high-consequence infectious disease. The guidelines address personal protective equipment (PPE) donning and doffing, EMS provider down, PPE breaches, biohazard spills, waste management, ambulance modification, and ambulance cleaning and disinfection. They complement ASPR TRACIE's EMS Infectious Disease Playbook (https://files.asprtracie.hhs.gov/documents/aspr-tracie-transport-playbook-508.pdf).
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Plans, Tools, and Templates: Hospitals
This plan can help healthcare providers manage an H1N1 outbreak or other large scale epidemic or pandemic. Developed during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, it provides a checklist/template for hospital preparedness.
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This planning tool is intended to assist healthcare coalitions (HCCs) and their partners in assessing their preparedness for an influenza pandemic. It may also be used to orient the response as a pandemic begins. This checklist can help HCCs assess, create, and improve their pandemic preparedness and response plans.
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This guide is part of a toolkit that can help emergency planners create an interactive, discussion-based exercise focusing on impacts to healthcare coalition and healthcare facilities caused by large numbers of patients seeking healthcare following exposure to an infectious agent.
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This checklist is intended to assist hospitals in evaluating current pandemic influenza plans or developing new ones.
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This workbook was designed to assist hospitals in coordinating the care of pediatric patients during an influenza pandemic. The workbook guides hospitals in thinking about needed actions to inform their preparedness planning. NOTE: This resource is outdated, however it provides useful information that may still be relevant.
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This guide is intended to assist community hospitals in identifying issues with response capabilities and resource availability during an influenza pandemic as well as to develop strategies to address them.
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This document provides guidelines to hospitals to prepare for an influenza pandemic. It includes a summary of recommended actions and their triggers, checklists, sample response guides, general background information, and links to additional resources.
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This toolbox includes a variety of resources to assist frontline facilities in their readiness activities related to patients with high consequence infectious diseases. Included are planning and training tools, exercise templates, and the components (e.g., screening guide, checklists, posters) to create a readiness binder.
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This toolkit is intended for use by hospital emergency departments, and tests how long it takes for a potential patient with a highly infectious disease to be identified and for staff to begin exposure mitigation procedures; how long it takes for a patient to be transferred to an isolation room; and the capability of the facility to make notifications internally and to the health department. The Toolkit includes scenarios for Ebola Virus Disease, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, and Measles, but may be modified to suit healthcare facilities of any nature and any type of disease outbreak.
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This planning guide from New York City Health + Hospitals provides high-level planning information for frontline hospital multidisciplinary teams to support planning and training for the initial care of suspected special pathogen patients while determining whether and when they will be transferred to another facility for further assessment and treatment.
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This webpage contains links to four free toolkits that were developed to provide healthcare providers immediate access to key infectious disease outbreak information and resources. The toolkits contain guidance on incident management, emerging pathogens, IPC strategies, COVID-19, communication, negotiation, and implementation. Each toolkit contains checklists, guidance documents, case studies, and fillable tables to meet the planning and response needs prior to or during an infectious disease outbreak.
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Plans, Tools, and Templates: Long Term Care/Assisted Living/Home Health
This state-specific report provides guidance to long-term providers on what actions to take to protect the health and safety of the staff and residents in their facilities in the event of a pandemic influenza outbreak (e.g., vaccines/antivirals, PPE use, staff impact and augmented supply management). It may be used to develop a hazard-specific Pandemic Influenza Plan Annex to a facility’s Emergency Operations Plan.
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This checklist can help public and private healthcare organizations assess and better their pandemic influenza preparedness and planning.
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This toolkit has sub links in three areas: staff vaccinations; increasing coverage and other vaccine-related information. It is intended to inform long-term care facilities and their owners about the importance of influenza vaccination among their workforce.
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This resource identifies state statutes or regulations that require long term care facilities to assess the influenza vaccination status of personnel or patients, to offer or require influenza vaccination among personnel or patients, or require unvaccinated personnel to wear surgical masks during influenza season.
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This resource page for LTC owners, administrators, and staff and their emergency preparedness partners includes downloadable Word templates to create contingency staffing and testing plans for LTCs. Also included are webinar recordings describing how to use each of the plan templates and guidance on effectively developing a testing plan using the template. While developed for the COVID-19 pandemic, these resources may be used for other epidemics that stress staffing and testing resources.
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This tool is intended to assist nursing facilities in developing their pandemic preparedness and response plans. It consists of several modules, which are to be used as a guide to facilitate discussion and to ensure that key points related to a specific topic, such as human resources, are identified and addressed in the planning process. It also includes sample policies and procedures and a module on ethics/values.
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Plans, Tools, and Templates: Other
The goal of the National Health Security Strategy (NHSS) is to strengthen and sustain communities’ abilities to prevent, protect against, mitigate the effects of, respond to, and recover from disasters and emergencies. This webpage includes links to the full text of the strategy, an overview, the NHSS Implementation Plan, the NHSS Evaluation of Progress, and an NHSS Archive.
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This document updates the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s guidance how to respond to a highly pathogenic avian influenza outbreak. It considers protection for the public health, agricultural security, the food supply, and animal health. It discusses the risks to poultry flocks, in which highly pathogenic avian influenza can cause significant morbidity and mortality.
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This planning tool is intended to assist healthcare coalitions (HCCs) and their partners in assessing their preparedness for an influenza pandemic. It may also be used to orient the response as a pandemic begins. This checklist can help HCCs assess, create, and improve their pandemic preparedness and response plans.
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This checklist identifies actions that businesses can take to plan for pandemic influenza.
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This tool was developed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other influenza experts to assess the risk of a human pandemic emerging from influenza A viruses currently circulating in animals. The IRAT uses 10 weighted evaluation criteria to assess the risk of both emergence and public health impact and to classify each virus as low, moderate, or high risk.
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This plan documents actions by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to prepare for, respond to, and recover from pandemics, including details on the policy and operational responses of the agency to support internal and external stakeholders.
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This article describes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s revised framework for pandemic influenza preparedness and response. The authors describe the six intervals along the pandemic curve and eight domains used to organize efforts within each interval.
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This web page includes links to various Homeland Security Exercise and Evaluation Program-compliant templates to assist healthcare coalitions, frontline facilities, assessment hospitals, state-designated Ebola treatment centers, regional Ebola and special pathogen treatment centers, and their respective response partners in the planning and conduct of exercises on the identification, assessment, treatment, management, transport, and transfer of high risk patients. The site includes templates for drills, tabletops, functional, and full-scale exercises. There is also a beginners guide to assist users new to exercise planning.
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The National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza provides strategies to stop, slow or limit the spread of a pandemic to the United States; limit the domestic spread of a pandemic, and mitigate disease, suffering and death; and sustain infrastructure and minimize economic and societal impacts. It aims to do so through preparedness and communication; surveillance and detection; and response and containment.
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This plan contains the following sections: command, plans section (by unit), operations section, logistics, and finance. Four annexes that focus on different threats are included, as are sample forms and other appendices.
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This guide can help people create a plan for and recognize the signs of influenza and care for themselves or others sick with the virus. It is available in several languages.
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This updated plan builds upon the 2005 Pandemic Influenza Plan and its subsequent updates, focusing on the seven domains of: surveillance, epidemiology, and laboratory activities; community mitigation measures; medical countermeasures; health care system preparedness and response activities; communications and public outreach; scientific infrastructure and preparedness; and domestic and international response policy, incident management, and global partnerships and capacity building.
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This toolkit is intended to provide business leaders that are new to pandemic planning with information regarding high-priority Human Resources (HR) issues related to business operations during influenza pandemic. While some of the links in the presentation are outdated, the presentation provides a valuable overview of issues and tasks.
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Plans, Tools, and Templates: Physician Offices
This checklist identifies universal early preparations, describes actions for areas with suspected or known pandemic influenza, outlines telephone and office triage, notes referral or transfer and waste disposal procedures, and lists required equipment and supplies for physician offices to consider when preparing for pandemic influenza.
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This resource kit was designed to address issues that occurred during 2009 H1N1 planning and allows for pediatricians, public health leaders, and other pediatric care providers to assess what is already happening in their community or state, and help determine what needs to be done before an emergency or disaster. It promotes collaborative discussions and decision making about pediatric preparedness planning at the local and state level and encourages integration of pediatric providers into disaster planning. It also contains a link to the Joint Policy Statement—Guidelines for Care of Children in the Emergency Department, as well as a Preparedness Checklist for Pediatric Practices and guidance for prioritizing vaccination during pandemics.
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The planning tool, based on discussion during an August 2009 CDC-sponsored stakeholder meeting, identifies considerations in a wide range of subject areas that primary care office staff should keep in mind when developing their office pandemic plans.
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This flowchart can aid medical staff in triaging calls. The tool may identify high-risk patients for consideration of initiation of antiviral treatment prior to an office visit.
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This template can assist pediatric medical offices in identifying needed modifications to current office practices and developing a pandemic influenza plan.
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This document was created to help primary care providers develop pandemic influenza response plans. It includes a monthly planning calendar, as well as a detailed plan template for practices to fill in.
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Research
The authors reviewed literature through to 2013 that discussed healthcare workers’ willingness to work during an influenza pandemic, and found that willingness to work ranged from 23.1% to 95.8%, depending on the context. Male gender, physicians and nurses, full-time employment, perceived personal safety, awareness of pandemic risk and clinical knowledge of influenza pandemics, role-specific knowledge, pandemic response training, and confidence in personal skills were statistically significantly associated with increased willingness. Childcare obligations were significantly associated with decreased willingness.
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The authors estimated more than 200,000 respiratory deaths with more than 83,000 additional cardiovascular deaths worldwide associated with 2009 influenza A H1N1. This mortality estimate is 15 times higher than the number of reported laboratory-confirmed deaths.
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The authors reviewed all 339 patients with a clinical diagnosis of influenza at a single hospital emergency department from May 2008 to December 2009 to compare patient management pre and during the H1N1 pandemic and to test adherence to H1N1 guidance from the CDC and the American College of Emergency Physicians. They found similar rates of hospital admission, but different clinical presentation patterns during the pandemic period. Diagnostic testing practices were very good or excellent in adherence to guidelines, but suboptimal in antiviral prescription guideline adherence.
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The authors interviewed 65 primary care physicians in Australia, Israel, and England about their experiences during the 2009 influenza pandemic. Physicians in all three countries perceived difficulties in translating pandemic policies and guidelines into practice. The researchers attributed this to knowledge barriers (high volume of information and lack of time to keep pace, multiple sources of information, guidelines not oriented to primary care), primary care physician doubts about some guidelines, and operational difficulties associated with providing personalized consultations to patients hearing media reporting on policy changes before physicians received official updates from health authorities.
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The authors conducted a nationally representative, cross-sectional survey of the pandemic influenza planning of 2,294 assisted living facilities and personal care homes. They found that more than half did not have a pandemic influenza plan. Facilities that were small, for-profit, and non-chain-affiliated were less likely to have a plan while those with higher staff vaccination rates were more likely to have a plan.
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The authors conducted a case-control study to determine the association between body mass index and risk of hospitalization due to influenza. The researchers matched laboratory-confirmed hospitalized influenza patients with laboratory-confirmed outpatients and an outpatient control group during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 influenza seasons. They found an approximate five-fold increase in risk of hospitalization for those with a body mass index between 35 and 40 kg/m2 compared to those of normal weight. They also found significantly increased risk of hospitalization for those with a body mass index between 30 and 34.9 kg/m2 who are unvaccinated and under 65 years of age, underscoring the importance of influenza vaccination for these populations.
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The authors used statistical modeling on time series data from two medical claims databases to estimate outpatient visits for respiratory diagnoses and otitis media attributable to influenza. For those under age 65, the model estimated approximately 14.5 million outpatient visits for respiratory diagnoses attributable to influenza, with approximately 80% occurring in those age 5 to 49. They also found approximately 2.2 million outpatient visits for otitis media attributable to influenza, with 86% occurring in those under 18 years of age.
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The authors analyzed vital statistics and emergency department visit data for cardiovascular deaths during non-pandemic influenza seasons from 2006 to 2012 in New York City. They found a 2.3% increase in cardiovascular disease mortality, a 2.4% increase in ischemic heart disease mortality, and a 5.5% increase in myocardial infarction mortality in those 65 years and older associated with an increase from the 25th to 75th percentiles in the number of influenza-related emergency department visits in the previous 21 days.
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The authors reviewed 16 observational studies and found that corticosteroid therapy for presumed influenza-associated complications is associated with increased mortality. The authors also noted that they were unable to identify any clinical trials on the issue, not all studies specified the indications for corticosteroid therapy, and that when doses were specified they were a higher daily dose than typically recommended.
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The authors modeled the number of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to 2009 H1N1 to address likely underreporting and compared these estimates to those for seasonal influenza. They found that the rates of hospitalizations and deaths among those under 65 were higher than for seasonal influenza while the rates of hospitalization were 75 percent lower and deaths 81 percent lower among those 65 and older in comparison to seasonal influenza.
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This Norwegian study of general practice and primary care doctors on duty in out-of-hours services reviewed consultations for influenza-like illness during the 2009 pandemic in comparison to the 2008-2009 influenza season. In both seasons, the majority of consultations occurred in general practice, but there was a 5.5 fold increase in out-of-hours consultations during the pandemic year.
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Resource Allocation and Management
This study models the number of additional ventilators that could be absorbed by hospitals during the peak of an influenza pandemic.
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The authors convened an expert consensus panel representing health providers, administrators, emergency planners, and specialists, and asked them to review four disaster scenarios and prioritize 132 hospital resources. The number of hospital resources considered to be critical varied by scenario: 58 for the pandemic influenza scenario, 51 for radiation exposure, 41 for explosives, and 35 for nerve gas scenario.
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The authors modeled demand for N95 filtering facepiece respirators and surgical masks during an influenza pandemic under base case, intermediate demand, and maximum demand scenarios. Because the billions of respirators and masks required under all three scenarios would likely exceed supply, the authors suggest the consideration of other strategies, including extended use and reuse of respirators and the use of other types of respirators.
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This report summarizes a series of workshops on the public’s perception of how to facilitate access to antiviral medication and treatment during an influenza pandemic.
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The authors developed a model to determine the optimal local versus central storage allocation of mechanical ventilators based on risk and stockpiling cost. Using data from Texas under mild, moderate, and severe scenarios, they found while central stockpiles may be more cost-effective, they are only advisable when there is little correlation in peak demand among local areas and deployment from a central location is highly reliable.
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The authors describe the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Nurse Triage Line Project and its goals of using a coordinated network of nurse triage telephone lines during a pandemic to assess the health status of callers, help callers determine the most appropriate site for care, disseminate information, provide clinical advice, and provide access to antiviral medications to those who need it.
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This commentary on Huang, H., Araz, O., Morton, D., et al.’s Stockpiling Ventilators for Influenza Pandemics offers context for the challenge of estimating surge demand for ventilators during a pandemic. The authors discuss the importance of models like the ones described in the article and identify its strengths and limitations.
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The authors created a spreadsheet model to explore potential demand for invasive mechanical ventilation during an influenza pandemic. They used four standardized pandemic scenarios, each with a low and high clinical severity. They found that the number of deaths prevented varied greatly by scenario and was influenced by the shape of the epidemic curve and the effectiveness of ventilation as well as the distribution of ventilators throughout the healthcare system along with trained staff and resources to support their use.
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Following the detection of a novel influenza strain A (H7N9), the authors modeled the use of antiviral treatment in the U.S. to mitigate severe disease across a range of hypothetical pandemic scenarios. The model included estimates of attack rate, healthcare-seeking behavior, prescription rates, and other related data. Based on these inputs, the total antiviral regimens estimated to be available in the U.S. (as of April 2013) were deemed sufficient to meet treatment needs for the scenarios considered.
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This report proposes incentivizing regions with low numbers of cases during a pandemic not to hold or acquire unused medical supplies that are needed in regions with high case counts by guaranteeing they will be prioritized to receive supplies when they are needed to managing increasing numbers of cases. A centralized pool of dedicated resources would be available to draw upon as a backstop.
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The Minnesota Department of Health developed several tools to support healthcare providers during the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, including MN FluLine, a nurse triage line, that reached many rural and uninsured residents, and, according to the authors, may have prevented up to 11,000 in-person health-care encounters.
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The authors designed a decision model to determine whether the benefits of stockpiling antivirals for an influenza pandemic outweigh the negative consequences of not stockpiling. They estimated both the cost-effectiveness benefits as well as the health benefits, which were measured as deaths averted by stockpiling. While they found that the probability of not using a stockpile was greater than using it, stockpiling was justified due to the catastrophic losses that would occur from a severe pandemic without it.
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The authors describe a conceptual framework for the distribution of ventilators stockpiled by the federal government during a large-scale emergency. They identify necessary planning steps to aid in the optimal allocation of ventilators to individual hospitals.
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Vaccines
#Get Vaccinated. (2023).
Provider Resources.
(Added 12/28/2020.) American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living .
This toolkit contains various resources to support the #GetVaccinated campaign, including talking points, templates, and media materials.
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This resource page includes links to various materials to help communicate about COVID-19 vaccination.
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The authors modeled the effects of variables including the start time of a vaccination campaign, number of vaccine doses administered per week and allocation by age group, clinical attack rate, case hospitalization ratio, and case fatality ratio, on an influenza pandemic. The timing of the start of the vaccination campaign relative to the start of the pandemic had the greatest effect, with 141,000 to 2.2 million hospitalizations and 11,000 to 281,000 deaths prevented when the vaccination program started prior to the beginning of the pandemic.
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This document provides guidance on the allocation of influenza vaccine during the early stages of a pandemic when demand may exceed production capacity. It offers general principles on pandemic vaccination and a framework based on targeted groups and pandemic severity.
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This webpage includes links to current and archived influenza vaccine recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
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The authors analyzed reporting data from immunization and public health preparedness programs to assess their pandemic planning with pharmacies. They found that most jurisdictions include pharmacies in their pandemic vaccine distribution plans, nearly half have a process to recruit pharmacists as vaccinators, and nearly a third have formal relationships established with pharmacies.
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The authors describe using a population-based allocation model versus a model based on population plus inventory demand to simulate the value of information on vaccine inventory levels during an influenza pandemic. They find that the population plus inventory approach may reduce the attack rate, decrease the amount of unused vaccine, and maintain or increase the percentage of the population vaccinated, suggesting that greater visibility of the vaccine supply chain would be beneficial.
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The authors completed an umbrella review and reanalyzed data from 15 previously published meta-analyses to determine how different analyses and study selection criteria could explain differences in findings or interpretations. They found statistically significant efficacy and effectiveness – high for laboratory-confirmed cases in children and adults and modest for clinically-confirmed cases and for the elderly – of seasonal influenza vaccines. They identified a scarcity of data on the efficacy of live-attenuated vaccine in those less than two years old, suboptimal quality of harms data, and a lack of meta-analysis on the effect of H1N1 vaccination on clinical outcomes.
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These fact sheets can help breastfeeding people and their healthcare providers learn more about the effect of select infections (e.g., COVID-19, Group-A and -B strep, and mpox) and related vaccines on pregnancy and breastmilk.
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The authors analyzed results from two surveys to assess readiness to vaccinate critical infrastructure personnel during an influenza pandemic. They found that less than half of responding public health preparedness programs had a plan to identify and vaccinate such workers and slightly more than a quarter of immunization programs knew the number of such personnel in their jurisdictions.
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The authors provide an overview of influenza and discuss epidemiology and surveillance, perspectives on vaccines and antivirals, and research opportunities related to universal vaccine, alternate vaccine production strategies, novel antiviral development, and continued transmission studies.
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The authors modeled the effects on hospital capacity in one city of various strategies to control an influenza pandemic. They calculated ranges bounded by no interventions and all interventions for the attack rate, peak acute care hospital capacity, peak intensive care unit capacity, and mortality along with estimated economic burdens. They found vaccination, isolation, and personal protective measures to be the most effective strategies. However, all interventions decreased in effectiveness as transmissibility increased and as the outbreak progressed.
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This study reviews existing systematic reviews and meta-analyses on pandemic influenza interventions including vaccines, antivirals, personal protective measures, school closures, and traditional Chinese medicine. Pandemic influenza vaccine was found to be protective against infection, but the authors found insufficient evidence for the effectiveness of each of the other interventions in isolation and hypothesized that a combination of interventions would be most effective.
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The authors developed a model to estimate the effects of vaccine administration in retail pharmacies. They estimated that nationwide capacity to administer vaccines would increase to 25 million doses per week when retail pharmacies were included and that the time to achieve 80% nationwide vaccination coverage could be reduced by seven weeks.
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U.S. Food and Drug Administration. (2020).
Vaccine Development – 101.
(Added 12/23/2020.) U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
This webpage describes the steps that vaccine developers follow when seeking FDA approval of a vaccine.
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Agencies and Organizations
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Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Influenza.
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Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.
Influenza.
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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Influenza.
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U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.
Avian Influenza.
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