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Feeling Sick

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Well, it’s finally happened.

Last week, the A(H1N1) virus (which is still being referred to as “swine flu” by a number of media outlets, including the BBC) became a formal pandemic.

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The World Health Organization made the announcement in an emergency meeting after cases of A(H1N1) rose sharply in Australia last week.

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At present, A(H1N1) is present in 74 countries, and there are nearly 28,000 confirmed cases of infection. The overall impact of the disease, however, has been fairly manageable, causing mild to moderate illness in the vast majority of cases. Concerns over the disease have caused school shutdowns in many countries, including the United States, and it all but put Mexico City under total lockdown back in April when the disease first gained global media coverage.

As this article by the BBC suggests, there has been some dissonance between the general public concern over a possible A(H1N1) pandemic and the effects the pandemic has actually delivered.

Long story short: the pandemic warning system was really meant to alert the public to a genuinely dangerous outbreak along the lines of avian flu, that could cause widespread death and hospitalization. Thankfully, A(H1N1) has not done that, but as this blog reported earlier, it has caused a fair bit if collateral damage among the pork industry because of its unfortunate (and inaccurate) “swine flu” moniker.

Ultimately, the true weight of the pandemic should be kept in perspective.

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Though the disease has killed and spread globally, its effects still pale in comparison to any number of more serious disease outbreaks throughout the world, such as cholera in Zimbabwe (the result of that country’s government utter failure to manage anything), dengue fever in Argentina (which is taking its toll politically on President Cirstina Kirchner) and the ever-present risk of malaria, which in 2006 alone sickened nearly 250 million people and killed some 881,000.

After A(H1N1) runs its course, the media (and this blog as well) will undoubtedly get rapped on the knuckles for overblown coverage of a modest disease. “Pandemic” is a measure of a disease’s breadth of exposure, not its severity of illness. And while the A(H1N1) story has proven to be not nearly as serious as early reports warned, better that we go on alert wrongly than pretend a risk does not exist.

Insurance Coverage for A (H1N1)

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The safety of workers is a top concern for businesses operating during any type of influenza outbreak. Attorneys from Anderson Kill & Olick, P.C. have created a pdf regarding insurance coverage for A (H1N1) claims.

Step one states that employers should access and implement the Business Pandemic Influenza Planning Checklist offered by the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services.

Step two is to consider the company’s current insurance policies and the protections provided by it. Businesses should review their property, business interruption, workers comp and liability insurance, among others.

“Such policies are the business equivalent of a vaccine against the flu.”

The report also answers the following questions, which are likely to arise under these various insurance policies when it comes to the current outbreak:

  • Is business interruption coverage available for the A (H1N1) pandemic?
  • Is there CGL or D&O coverage for claims related to A (H1N1)?
  • Will afflicted workers be covered under state workers comp laws?
  • Does a flu outbreak constitute an “occupational disease?”
  • How many self-insured retentions will apply in the event of an outbreak?

shutterstock_h1n1

What’s in a Name?

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As we begin the week, the influenza outbreak continues to gather steam. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 20 countries have officially reported close to 1,000 cases of A (H1N1) influenza infection.

Of these a little more than half are in Mexico, where 25 people have died from the disease. According to the BBC, more than 200 cases have been confirmed among 30 U.S. states, with more expected in the coming days. The disease remains at a level 5 WHO alert, one step below pandemic status.

With news like this, it’s easy to over-react. But it pays to keep some things – like the disease’s relatively low death rate thus far – in perspective.

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After all, this disease has also caused a fair amount of collateral damage. While the WHO does not encourage full-bore border closings or national travel restrictions as a reaction to the outbreak, it does suggest that people who are already ill should delay international travel.

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Likewise, groups such as RIMS have suggested restricting nonessential travel, and numerous airlines have reduced flights and have gone to using smaller planes.

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Mexico has been particularly hard hit by all of this, as would be any nation that relies on tourism income to any appreciable degree. Toronto certainly learned that the hard way during its experience with SARS.

Perhaps the most dramatic, and most unnecessary, reaction to the outbreak thus far has been the nationwide swine cull in Egypt, which illustrated just how hard the pork industry has been hit by this, and by extension, the secondary businesses (e.g., restaurants, grocery stores) it deals with.  Last week, the WHO advised against referring to the outbreak any further as “swine flu,” since it raised inaccurate notions over the safety of pork products. The European Union has done likewise.

This blog will also do the same, referring to the disease henceforth by its proper name, influenza A (H1N1). This denotes that the current influenza outbreak is a type-A H1N1 virus. To prevent further confusion, this blog has also edited past posts to change the name of the disease where necessary.

An Interview With Dr. Steven Weisbart

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Dr. Steven Weisbart, senior vice president and chief economist of the Insurance Information Institute, spoke with us today in regards to A (H1N1)u and its implications on businesses.

In terms of workers comp and business interruption, do you see any impact in those areas due to this outbreak?
Not in terms of business interruption, the disease is typically not an insured peril for that so I would say, unless we’re talking about very specialized events that have specialized event interruption insurance, there would be no business interruption implications that I could see.

In terms of workers comp you’d have to demonstrate in satisfactory fashion that contracting the disease arose out of, or in the course of, employment. I would think that that would be somewhat hard to prove unless maybe a cluster of employees at a given employer came down with it and then you could argue that they gave it to each other at the workplace. So I think it would be kind of a case by case thing. Obviously employers would be well advised to take the kind of mitigation measures and prevention measures like keeping sick people at home. But there may be some workers comp claims out of this.

If the CDC imposes travel restrictions, would your outlook change on that?
No. I mean, there are cases where order of government authority is a covered peril, but that typically has to do with situations like if there’s a fire, or other kinds of physical situations that the police or fire department require you to not travel to a physical location.

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This is different I think. So as a broad statement, I would say no, that doesn’t change my outlook.

Do you think this is likely to hit phase 6 as issued by the WHO and if so, would that change anything in terms of workers comp or business interruption?
There’s certainly a chance to get there and I think it depends on how the course of the disease goes. We’ve apparently had a very different experience in the U.S. than from what’s going on in Mexico. If Mexico had had our experience, I don’t think we’d be where we are today. But I don’t think anything would change from now in regards to workers comp or business interruption. I think the reason claims would or wouldn’t be paid would be true under current or worse conditions.

Every year the average flu kills tens of thousands of people in the U.S. and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide. With that in mind, do you think this is a complete overreaction from the public and the media?
Oh no. We’ve been worried about infectious influenza certainly in recent years since SARS and the bird flu strain was identified and I think that given the seemingly rapid spread of infection that this is an appropriate level of concern. It appears, at least in the U.S., that this is not as deadly as it appears to have been in Mexico but there’s nothing to say the strain couldn’t mutate and become deadly, so I think we should be as alert and as extensive in communication about this as possible. I don’t think this is an overreaction at all.

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Do surgical masks really help?
The only masks that might be of some help are the N95 masks and the reason they might be of some help is because they are much finer in their ability to block out droplets that might contain the virus. Anything that is not as fine a filter as an N95 would probably be of no help at all.

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