Understand how to prepare yourself and your family for a pandemic influenza in Alberta.
The word pandemic describes any disease that causes outbreaks of an illness over a wide geographic area and affects an exceptionally high proportion of the population.
All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to prepare themselves and their families to avoid significant impacts due to emergency situations such as a pandemic.
All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to prepare themselves and their families to avoid significant impacts due to emergency situations. Information on family preparedness is available on the Government of Canada Get Prepared website.
Information for families and individuals on Pandemic Influenza Planning can be obtained on alberta.ca.
If you are experiencing influenza symptoms with fever:
In the event of complete or partial campus closure, employees are expected to:
When the campus re-opens, employees are expected to:
If the campus closure or class suspension is announced, students are expected to:
Once a re-opening of the campus is announced, students are expected to report to class on the identified day. If you are unable to report to class due to quarantine, requested isolation, nursing an infected person or illness with the pandemic influenza, information about required actions will be available on .
An infectious disease "outbreak" describes a distribution of cases of communicable disease that are unusual in terms of time, place or persons affected (Alberta Public Health Act, Communicable Disease Regulations, 2005).
As Outbreaks may have the ability to spread quickly in a university environment due to the number and close proximity of individuals the university will work closely with Alberta Health Services to assist them in investigating occurrences of all notifiable communicable disease outbreaks to establish the cause, mode of transmission, probable source and identification of individuals who are deemed to be at risk of contracting the disease and implementation of required infection prevention and control measures.
Alberta Health Services is the lead health authority in the Province of Alberta. They are responsible for managing the reporting of notifiable communicable diseases.
The Alberta Health Services Regional Medical Officer of Health (MOH) is responsible to take all reasonable steps to ensure that reportable communicable disease cases are investigated (including contacts and source(s) of infection) and that isolation procedures, quarantine and special measures delineated in the Alberta Public Health Act – Communicable Disease Regulation, are complied with.
Reporting Requirements
When notification of a suspected or confirmed infectious disease outbreak or case of a notifiable communicable disease is received via internal university sources, the Director of Risk Management & Insurance or the Director of the University Wellness Centre will contact Alberta Health Services.
Investigation of Contacts and Source(s) of Infection
When notification of a suspected or confirmed infectious disease outbreak or case of notifiable communicable disease is received via the Alberta Health Services MOH/designate or has been confirmed as per above, the university shall assist the MOH/designate in establishing the cause, mode of transmission, probable source and identification of individuals who are deemed to be at risk of contracting the disease and implementation of any required infection prevention control measures. This may be done with the assistance of a variety of university departments, depending on the travel pattern of the infected individuals, whether they are residents on campus, etc.
The university shall manage information on such cases through the University Wellness Centre and provide any required information to the infectious disease outbreak specialist or the communicable disease contact as indicated by Alberta Health Services.
Special Measures
The university shall follow any special measures as determined by the MOH/designate for control of the particular disease. This could include:
Communication
The university will provide the campus community with information on any preventative measures recommended by the MOH/designate using the established Emergency Communications Plan. The University Wellness Centre will assist in the preparation of such information. Alberta Health Services will also collaborate to ensure consistent messaging between the respective organizations.
The university will communicate with the campus community, including students, employees and external stakeholders (where required) regarding the situation.
The university will continue to communicate with Alberta Health Services MOH, Alberta Health Services and municipal and government authorities as required throughout the situation.
Travellers
Where the Infectious Disease Outbreak has occurred outside of Alberta and may be affecting university students or employees travelling, the university shall:
Immunization
Where the MOH recommends immunization as a preventative measure to reduce the spread of the Outbreak, the university shall make its best efforts to assist Alberta Health Services with organizing such immunizations for the campus community. The university shall also communicate the offer of such to the students and employees.
Any immunization program implemented will be established in collaboration with Alberta Health Services.
Maintenance of Essential Business Activities
The university shall, where possible, continue its essential business activities.
Dependent on the level of the emergency, the Emergency Operations Group (EOG) will act as the body for assessing the impact of the Outbreak on university business functions and formulating and implementing strategies to enable the university to continue essential operations.
The Canadian, Alberta and Calgary Health Region plans will be activated at the close of the pre-pandemic and Pandemic Alert Periods when the World Health Organization confirms evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission and the onset of a pandemic.
The designation of global phases for Pandemic Influenza is made by the Director General of the World Health Organization. This group will decided the current phase and will communicate it to The Public Health Agency of Canada.
This group will communicate any Canadian cases of Pandemic Influenza to WHO. The Pandemic Influenza Committee advises Canadian, provincial and territorial health departments on the health response in Canada.
The Alberta Chief Medical Officer will implement the Provincial plan and alert the Calgary Health Region Chief Medical Officer.
Foreign Affairs Canada is responsible to provide international Travel Reports. They will usually indicate any areas that have a major health concern.