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Roberta J. Witty
Research VP
11 years at Gartner
33 years IT industry

Roberta Witty is a research VP in Gartner Research, where she is part of the Compliance, Risk and Leadership group. Her primary area of focus is business continuity management and disaster recovery. Ms. Witty is the role specialty lead for… Read Full Bio

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Advisory #6: Phase 5 – A Strong Signal of Imminent Pandemic

by Ken McGee  |  April 30, 2009  |  Comments Off

This post is offered to clarify the WHO declaration the spread of the A (H1N1) virus has now reached Phase 5 and how to indicate how close we might be to an official, WHO-defined pandemic.

Punchline:

  1. Complete your readiness plan gap analysis this week.
  2. Immediately commence filling gaps.

Currently we are at Phase 5

Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.

Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community-level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.

World Health Organization Regions Nations Reporting H1N1 as of 30/4/09

African Region                            0

Eastern Mediterranean Region     1

European Region                         6

Regions of the Americas             4

South-East Asia Region              0

Western Pacific Region                1

Reported Cases Per Nation as of 30/4/09

Mexico                   98

Unities States         93

Canada                  16

New Zealand          14

Spain                     10

UK                        5

Ireland                   4

Germany                3

Israel                      2

South Korea           1

Austria                   1

France                    1

Costa Rica             1

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