ABC news is reporting that a shortage of the vaccine for H1N1 is looming. This is mostly due to the virus being slower to reproduce in the chicken egg medium used to grow the viral load for the injections.

Health care workers and children will receive the bulk of the available vaccine when it is available, likely beginning in October.

Since most of the work force are not children or health care workers, this leaves quite a large population that should be planned for absences from work. Many people will become ill from the virus or be required to miss work taking care of others who are ill from the virus if the current trends continue.

While not ill, your organization should provide these workers a mechanism for working remotely, if possible. This not only allows you to continue your business operations, but also allows those with exposures to the virus to “work from home” limiting their contact with the rest of your team and the public in general.

This is the basis for the pandemic planning that is required and that we have been discussing in previous blog postings.

All businesses are urged to consider pandemic planning a priority and to consider creating, testing and revising their current plans.