Purpose
Although pandemics occur infrequently, planning and preparing for a pandemic is important to ensure an effective response. Planning for and responding to a pandemic is complex, and pandemics can affect everyone in a community. To plan and prepare for possible pandemics, public health officials, health care professionals, researchers, and scientists in the United States and across the world are working together.
Overview
An influenza pandemic—whether of low, moderate, high or very high severity—will place extraordinary and sustained demands on public health and health care systems and on providers of essential community services. Since 2005, the United States has worked to increase capacity for global pandemic response. HHS has developed and refined tools over the past decade to help guide different aspects of planning and response, including:
- evaluating the pandemic risk posed by a novel influenza A virus
- assessing the risk and potential public health impact posed by the novel influenza A virus
- understanding the possible progression of the event; developing a pre-pandemic candidate vaccine virus, or vaccine, and
- evaluating the severity and transmissibility to enable informed public health interventions.
Surveillance and monitoring, development and delivery of medical countermeasures (e.g., vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and respiratory protection devices) and non-pharmaceutical interventions, health care system response, and communications are integral components of pandemic planning and response.
Many resources are available to help international local, state, national, and international public health and health care professionals, corporations, and communities develop pandemic preparedness plans and strengthen their capabilities to respond to different pandemic scenarios.