Current evidence suggests that if the avian influenza now in Asia mutates into a virus easily spread among humans, the death toll in the area served by the Wellington Dufferin Guelph Health Unit is likely to be about 300.

That was the estimate given Tuesday at a briefing for media and stakeholders held at Guelph’s Delhi Street Community Centre. The audience was welcomed by Jan Craig, the health unit’s lifestyles and communications manager, who also wound up the agenda by outlining plans to handle vital communications during a pandemic.

Terming Tuesday’s session merely “the start of a process,” she told those present that the unit “did learn a lot from SARS.”

She said the unexpected outbreak of the oftenfatal respiratory illness in 2003 “showed that we need to be prepared.”

Noting that the health unit didn’t have a communications officer at the time, she said that even now the unit has only a single fax machine and a phone system that would be incapable of handling calls during a pandemic. Only recently did the communications branch have its own e-mail address, communications@wdghu. org.

Epidemiologist JoAnn Heale briefed the meeting on 20th Century pandemics and why the avian flu now spreading from Southeast Asia is seen as likely to lead to another one similar to the 1918 influenza outbreak that is believed to have killed about 50 million people worldwide.

Ms. Heale said pandemics usually have six phases, the first two involving only a virus present in birds or animals.

She said we currently are at the end of the third phase, during which there are some human infections with a new subtype of the virus and at most some rare instances of human-to-human spread. The first reported such spread of the H5N1 avian flue was in September 2004 when an Asian mother and her sister died.

In the current outbreak, there were 32 deaths in 2004, with a mortality rate of 73 per cent. So far this year there have been 61 deaths from 118 reported cases, or a mortality rate of 52 per cent.

Ms. Heale said the current expectation is that a pandemic will stem from the H5N1 virus combining with a human virus somewhere in Asia and that it will be between two and three months before the resultant epidemic reaches Canada.

Experts’ best guess is that between 25 and 30 per cent of the population will be infected. Depending on circumstances, somewhere between 39,000 and 91,000 of the 261,000 residents of Wellington and Dufferin counties and the City of Guelph would be infected. Of these, between 20,000 and 47,500 would seek health care, and 3,600 to 8,400 would be hospitalized.

The outbreak would be in the late fall or winter and would last between six and 12 weeks.

Ms. Heale said the outbreak would double the present load on hospital emergency rooms and lead to about 557 new hospital admissions each week.

She said the health unit’s twin goals in terms of communications would be to manage the data efficiently and to minimize societal disruption.

Janice Walters, the health unit’s program manager for communicable diseases, said that if the pandemic is as bad as the one in 1918 there is a likelihood that stores and schools will be closed, forcing healthy working parents to leave their jobs to become caregivers and potentially leading to food shortages.

She said that although the antiviral Tamiflu “is a good option, it’s fairly expensive.”

The health unit is currently updating its website, and new features will go online in February.