Drafter
Clerk 12/7/2005
title
AN ORDINANCE making an appropriation of $5,960,000 for pandemic flu preparedness; amending the 2005 Budget Ordinance, Ordinance 15083, Section 81, as amended, and adding a new section to Ordinance 15083.
body
STATEMENT OF FACTS:
1. Influenza is a highly contagious viral illness, characterized by a sudden onset of symptoms including fever/chills, cough, muscle aches and pains, headache and fatigue/weakness. The respiratory symptoms can last five to seven days, while fatigue and weakness can persist for up to three weeks. Complications of influenza include bronchitis, sinusitis, pneumonia, and encephalitis. Children, the elderly, and people with immune-suppressive, respiratory or cardiac diseases are most at risk of developing complications.
2. Influenza spreads when droplets from an infected person's cough or sneeze come in contact with the eyes, mouth or nose of an uninfected person. The virus can live for days on impermeable objects and can thereby infect people who come in contact with these contaminated objects. People are infectious for about one day before they develop symptoms and for up to a week while symptoms are active.
3. Humans have no natural immunity to influenza viruses, though persons previously infected with or vaccinated against a certain strain can develop immunity to that strain. The influenza virus mutates rapidly, leading to influenza epidemics occurring virtually every year. In the United States, annual influenza epidemics hospitalize more than two hundred thousand people and kill thirty-six thousand to forty thousand each year.
4. An influenza pandemic can occur when three conditions are met. First, the form of the influenza virus must "shift" in a significant way such that the human population has little or no existing immunity against the new emergent strain. Second, the new strain must be capable of infecting humans and causing illness. Third, the new emergent strain must adapt to ...

Click here for full text