Columbia Prepares for Possible Flu Outbreak

Free flu shots and wider installation of hand sanitizing dispensers are in play just in time for the coming onset of the common flu season.

Still, the threat of a possible flu pandemic has sparked the creation of administrative and student-run prevention groups—a strategy Director of Health Services Samuel Seward called a common part of “good, conservative public health emergency planning.”

“In our roles as the public health authority for the Morningside campus, it seemed prudent to pay attention to pandemic,” Seward said.

The result has been a Pandemic Preparedness Working Group, a group assembled in 2006 to develop a pandemic response plan for the University. Headed up by Senior Associate Dean for Health Affairs Robert Lewy, the group completed a draft of a pandemic response plan in the fall of last year, but Seward called the process “ongoing.”

“They all require ongoing revisions and updating,” Seward said. “We have a very workable document at this point.”

Following suggestions from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Columbia has joined the ranks of university campuses across the country that have been developing contingency plans for a possible flu outbreak. While the avian influenza H5N1—better known as “bird flu”—has been much publicized and feared as the next flu pandemic, Stephen Morse, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health and member of the PPWG stressed the difficulties in predicting flu behavior.

“Anyone who pretends that they can predict this [the flu] either is a charlatan or is deluding himself,” Morse said.

Still, Columbia public health officials are confident that a future flu pandemic is inevitable.

“It’ll happen pretty quickly, it’ll get here.... Whatever the next pandemic is, we’ll see it,” Morse said.

In the case of a pandemic flu outbreak, classes would likely be suspended and students would be advised to go home, with the University left to separate and isolate remaining students. Students would be relocated in residence halls in order to care for the sick, and “social isolation” areas would be set up in order to reduce flu spreading. Morse said that the University was currently in the process of developing new human resource policies in order to keep the campus running in the event of a severely reduced workforce.

The threat of a pandemic flu outbreak has also lead to the creation of Students Prep America, a student-run group dedicated to preparing universities for the outbreak of the avian flu. Founded by Justin Kamen, Christopher Baratta, and Alexander Diacou, all CC ’08, the group launched studentsprepamerica.org earlier in this year, a site devoted to the history of flu pandemics and influenza preparedness tips.

“Flu pandemics will always be with us. What we’re trying to do is prepare the students and our general community for what this possible future might mean,” Kamen said. “It demands really strict attention and it forces us to consider the worst case scenarios.”

Still, Seward emphasized that the goal of a pandemic contingency plan was simply preparedness, and not to create panic among the student body.

“A lot of the work needs to be done by people like me without having people be overly worried about things like this happening tomorrow.”