Pandemic Drill Paints Dire Picture
October 31, 2007 by mimmson
Filed under Flu Pandemic - Top News Stories
If a pandemic strikes the U.S., it will kill about 1.7 million people, hospitalize 9 million, exhaust antiviral medications and reduce basic food supplies, according to a planning scenario developed by financial service firms preparing for such a catastrophe.
This particular disaster occurred only on paper. But those grim numbers are some of the pandemic planning assumptions used by nearly 3,000 banks, insurance companies and security firms in a just-concluded, three-week, paper-based exercise that may have been the largest pandemic test of its kind.
In each week of this drill, participants — some 10,000 people were involved — received an updated scenario and were asked to assess their capability to deliver services as the pandemic deepened and then abated.
“We wanted to look at the impact a pandemic can have on our sector,” said George Hender, chairman of the Financial Services Coordinating Council, in a teleconference Wednesday. “One of the things that we tried to do is put some real stress on the firms.”
