Calls For RMs SARS Outbreak Plans

By Caroline McDonald

NU Online News Service, April 3, 2:48 p.m. EST?Risk managers for companies with international locations need to plan against a possible outbreak or exposure of employees to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, according to an insurers trade group.

There are two ways risk managers can prepare their companies, said Keith Lessner, vice president, safety and environment for the Alliance of American Insurers in Downers Grove, Ill. The first step, he said, is to keep their employees away from countries where outbreaks have occurred.

"Those countries are well-defined, especially Asian countries with a high incidence of these cases reported," Mr. Lessner said. There have been some outbreaks in Canada and there have been approximately 85 reported cases in the United States.

Anyone who has been in contact with someone with the disease should stay home for seven to 10 days, he said.

"At this point, it is not even clear what SARS is," he said. "One of the concerns is the difficulty of determining whether someone has SARS or something else, such as a cold or flu."

He said that as concentrations of the disease become more recognizable, "there will be pressure on public health officials to quarantine people."

Secondly, he urged risk managers to make plans to cover their essential operations.

"What the government of Hong Kong has been advising people to do is to outsource as much as you can" to someone already located within the country at risk, he said. "If you have operations in Hong Kong or a place where there are high concentrations, you should have a contingency plan."

He added that risk managers should pay particular attention to their essential data processing and financial operations and "consider how they will deal with this if they have overseas operations."

If an employee were to contract the disease while traveling as part of their work, it would be covered by workers' compensation, he said.

However, "the question of whether comp would pay for sending someone home from work when you're not sure if they have a disease is one that I would imagine would get a lot of litigation," he said.

Loretta L. Worters, vice president, communications with the Insurance Information Institute in New York, said an employee who is quarantined would not receive workers' comp because there has been no injury.

The company should pay for "time you are away from the job, or you could attempt to collect through unemployment benefits," she said.

In general, she added, most people who become ill from SARS will work with their health care plan and will use sick days during that time.

"If a health care worker contracts an injury or illness, there may be a workers' comp claim," she said. "This has happened with AIDS, when health care workers have contracted the disease by accidentally sticking themselves with needles."

The World Health Organization on its Web site, www.who.org/int/en, stated that from Nov. 1, 2002, to April 3, 2003, there have been 1,190 cases in China, 98 in Singapore, 85 in the United States, and 62 in Canada.

Other countries with reported cases of the disease include Australia, Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Switzerland, Thailand and the United Kingdom, according to WHO.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta has extended its travel advisory for SARS to include all of Mainland China as well as Hanoi, Vietnam and Singapore. The previous CDC travel advisory was for only Hong Kong and Guangdong Province, People's Republic of China and Hanoi, Vietnam.

CDC also announced it is not advising against travel to or from Canada because there is no evidence of widespread community transmission.

CDC said the symptoms of SARS include:

? A temperature of greater than 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38.0 degrees Celsius).

? One or more clinical findings of respiratory illness including cough, shortness of breath, difficulty in breathing, hypoxia (deficiency in the amount of oxygen reaching the tissues of the body), and X-rays indicating the presence of pneumonia.

Health care officials, CDC said, are not certain how long a patient with SARS may be contagious to others with whom they have close contact.

"We've seen that secondary transmission of SARS has occurred among people who live and have had very close contact with a SARS patient, or are health care personnel who have also had close contact with a SARS patient and did not use respiratory infection control measures," Dr. Julie Gerberding, CDC director, said in a statement. "That is why it is paramount that we provide these recommendations to prevent infection."

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Calls For RMs SARS Outbreak Plans

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