Published: Sunday, June 21, 2009
By WILLIAM J. KEMBLE
Correspondent
KINGSTON — People should have a three-week supply of food on hand in the case the current swine flu pandemic worsens, the leader of a town supervisors’ group said last week, and he warned that 40 percent of the workforce could be kept away from their jobs this fall if the outbreak lasts that long.
John Valk Jr., the supervisor of the town of Shawangunk and the president of the Ulster County Supervisors Association, said a worsening pandemic of the H1N1 influenza strain means “our workforce would be slower. Deliveries to stores would slow down, and that is the point of stocking up on 21 days’ worth of supplies. ... As things (get) backlogged, you’d have the things you need at the house.”
Greene County Public Health Director Marie Ostoyich has also advised readiness in the event the flu outbreak becomes more serious. She said briefings from state officials have emphasized that residents be prepared for the disruption of both municipal and commercial services.
“They did talk about (how) it won’t be business as usual,” Ostoyich said. “We don’t know about schools, businesses, whatever there may be — sort of like when we have a major snowstorm and we’re down to bare-bones basics and people aren’t to be out on the road traveling unless it’s absolutely necessary.
“We urged all the municipalities to come up with their plan,” she added, “but I don’t think I could, in any way, predict exactly what that’s going to look like when we’re there.”
Dr. Michael Caldwell, the Dutchess County health commissioner, said federal guidelines have varied during previous flu outbreaks, from keeping food supplies for as little as three days to longer periods based on the severity of the problem.
“You need to have a preparedness plan, maybe even more than three days of food, because, if there was a slowdown in travel, you would see a decrease in the ability to move food to your local shopping center and your local grocery store because a lot of those foods come in everyday,” Caldwell said. “We saw this with SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2002), and it went on a couple of months, and it was really causing a lot of trouble globally, particularly in the Asian part of the world and in Canada.”
Information being used by local officials in preparing for swine flu problems includes U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data about three influenza pandemics during the 20th century: the 1918-19 outbreak, which caused at least 675,000 U.S. deaths and up to 50 million deaths worldwide; the 1957-58 outbreak, which killed 70,000 in the United States and up to 2 million worldwide; and 1968-69 outbreak, which claimed 34,000 lives in this country and 700,000 around the world.
Valk said his grandmother died in the 1918 flu pandemic and he hopes medical science has advanced far enough to lessen the effects this time around.
“What I’ve read is that it was just like now, where it was, at first, minor and people thought we’d gotten through the flu season, and then it came back with a vengeance after the summer,” Valk said. “That’s when they lost control. Of course, they didn’t have flu vaccines” or flu treatments at the time.
Valk said even if there are fewer cases than expected in the current pandemic, it still could affect community services and be complicated by other events.
“If we had a snowstorm in the middle of winter and we had four of our highway guys (home sick) out of the 11, how would we get the roads clean?” he said.
Woodstock Supervisor Jeff Moran recently noted that, during the 1918 outbreak, there was a “lockdown” of the town.
“We stopped the traffic between Woodstock and Kingston, what traffic there was at that time, and closed the road,” he said.
The current flu outbreak — which was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization earlier this month — has been confirmed in 74 countries and all 50 states in this country. In the United States, there have been 21,449 cases of swine flu and 87 deaths associated with the disease. New York state has had more than 1,700 confirmed cases, and New York City has had 23 deaths.
Locally, there have been 30 confirmed cases of swine flu in Dutchess County, four in Ulster County, three in Columbia County and one in Greene County. There have been no reported flu deaths in the region during the current outbreak.
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