The People Bulletin

The Business Advisory Network for Flu (BANF) has made the following planning assumptions for the first wave of swine flu in the UK:

• the first wave of swine flu will happen between August and November - around 30 per cent of the public will be infected;
• the first wave will peak broadly between late August to late September;
• during the peak weeks employee absence rates for illness (themselves or looking after ill children) may reach 12 per cent of the workforce in addition to normal holiday absence; and
• the spread and tail-off of swine flu will not happen uniformly across the UK

A useful summary of available guidance on how to manage absence in during the pandemic is available here.

Reading University’s policy for its staff, which can be found  here, serves as a useful model for employers communicating employer and employee precautions and responsibilities, along with sources of further information.

Absence management consultants First Care provide an updated web page which picks up the latest data on working days lost to cough, colds or flu, summarised in the form of a rather dramatic chart that can be found on their home page: www.firstcare.eu. A massive 8 days per thousand employees were lost on 30th July, compared with 1.5 for the same period a year ago.

The government’s Swine Flu UK Planning Assumptions document (16 July)
predicts UK absence rates dropping from July’s 12% to 9% by the end of August on the basis of 7 working days for those suffering no complications and 10 working days for those that with complications.

The pandemic ethical committee set up by chief medical officer Sir Liam Donaldson has stated that the use of antivirals (eg Tamiflu) should be only for those in risk groups, or with underlying conditions and not used on a widespread basis. Its main concern was that a blanket use of drugs would compromise their effectiveness in the future if a more virulent strain reappeared, reminding the government that the current outbreak had more mild symptoms than originally anticipated when the stockpiles of the drug were made.

The first stage of a mass immunisation campaign will commence in the autumn. At the time of writing, the number of people in England who have died contracting the virus has risen to 59.