Avian flu drill reveals curable ills in university hospital’s protocol

BALTIMORE (Map, News) - At the height of the pandemic flu drill, the phones went dead, and hospital staff had to rely on handwritten notes.

As the University of Maryland Medical Center staff modeled a pandemic avian flu outbreak this week, the radios had a programming glitch, a wireless system in the hospital didn’t work outside where the triage tent was set up, and there was no cell- phone signal in a conference room used as an operations hub.

“You don’t discover these things until you’re running with it,” said Leonard Taylor, incident commander for the University of Maryland Medical Center’s drill. “This exposes things, and now we have an action item to figure out how to do it better.”

Across the state, hospitals, health departments and state health officials tested their ability to respond to a pandemic flu in a comprehensive drill.

“The worry about pandemic flu is that it could be a very virulent form of influenza that could cause a very high mortality rate,” said John Colmers, secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

In the state health department’s command center Wednesday, several workers answered phones, coordinating the response and preparing recommendations for state leaders.

The three-day exercise modeled the response to a severe sickness that could emerge overseas. The sickness would take several weeks to spread, peaking in about 12 weeks, when nearly two million people would be sick, Colmers said.

A pandemic flu is defined as a new virus to which people have little immunity and there is no vaccine, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The 1918 flu pandemic killed 50 million people worldwide, and many scientists believe it’s only a matter of time until another pandemic strikes.

“It’s fair to say it’s coming,” said Arlene Stephenson, acting deputy secretary for public health at DHMH.

Howard County health officials walked door-to-door Wednesday evening to test the best way to rapidly disseminate medications in an outbreak, the first drill of its kind on the East Coast.

Using campaigning software, health officials have mapped out the most efficient route around the Chateau Ridge Lake neighborhood of Ellicott City. They will be timing the event and comparing it with the method of having residents go to a clinic for medications, said Health Officer Dr. Peter Beilenson.

For state health officials, it’s too early to tell the major gaps, but officials are learning what information to have on hand for staff that might be asked to shift roles, Colmers said.

“In the midst of an outbreak,” he said, “we don’t want to have to think things up on the fly.”

smichael@baltimoreexaminer.com