UC Davis officials are hard at work on a plan to keep the university up and running in the event of an avian influenza pandemic.

The planning process assumes that many parents will summon their children home, that up to 50 percent of employees could be absent, and that the chancellor or public health officials could shut down the campus.

"In a worst-case scenario, there are functions on campus that could be postponed, if necessary," said Valerie Lucus, emergency manager.

But other things are essential, she said. They include police and fire service, to protect people still on campus, as well as university property; animal care; and the data center.

Jill Blackwelder, associate vice chancellor for Safety Services, said: "We need backup plans that acknowledge that certain operations have to go forward."

These issues are to be addressed in a Business Continuity Plan for Avian Influenza, with contributions from all deans and vice chancellors. Each has until Monday to appoint a work group for the planning process, and all of the work groups will have until July 1 to get their work done.

A planning guide includes a template that each work group must fill out; several two-hour workshops are planned to help work groups along. Blackwelder has asked the work groups "to identify the critical resources and functions of your unit, as well as the critical people, and to think creatively about ways to assure their continuity."

Blackwelder added in an interview: "We are getting people to crystallize their thinking. With the individual plans in hand, we can look for commonalities, look for holes, look for assumptions that are realistic and those that are not."

Lucus and the campus's Pandemic Management Team and Emergency Management Advisory Council will have until Sept. 1 to integrate the information into a single plan. The management team members are Blackwelder; Jan Gong, associate vice chancellor for Student Affairs; Michael O'Malley, a physician who is director of Employee Health Services; Lisa Lapin, assistant vice chancellor for University Communications; and Dan Simmons, chair of the Academic Senate.

Migratory birds

As UC Davis develops its plan, the avian flu virus H5N1 continues to spread. The outbreak began in Asian poultry in 2003 and so far has spread west to the Middle East and Europe. Collateral infections in people have occurred primarily in rural areas where many households keep small poultry flocks that often roam freely, sometimes entering homes or sharing outdoor areas where children play, according to the World Health Organization.

The health organization's tally last Friday listed 204 cases in people in Asia and the Middle East, and 113 deaths, with all of the infections believed to have been transmitted from bird to human. A bigger fear is that H5N1 will mutate to become transmissible from person to person.

Migratory birds are likely to carry the virus to the Americas — it is only a matter of time, officials believe.

The UC Davis planning template asks work groups to answer a series of questions, including: What is the chain of command within your school, college, department, division or unit? Is there a plan in place to communicate with key personnel? How will information be communicated to faculty, staff and students? How often are contact lists updated, and where are they kept? What functions must continue no matter what, and what can be postponed?

As deans and chancellors return their planning documents, emergency planners will look for common issues like animal care. "We can't just walk away and not keep the animals fed," Lucus said.

Blackwelder explained: "We don't want 50 departments solving the same problem 50 times." Instead, the university will prepare solutions for the entire campus.

For example, she said, Information and Educational Technology is preparing a position paper on keeping the data center going, and determining its connection capacity for employees and students working from home.

Blackwelder posed this question: What if every department wants to have its employees work from home during a pandemic?

"Imagine 20,000 staff people trying to do that at the same time," she said. "Can our data center support that, can Internet service providers support that?"

Some departments may decide that they need to have employees stay on campus for extended periods of time, Blackwelder said. "Rather than have everyone go out to buy cots and food, maybe there is a more holistic solution, like renting a local hotel."

Lucus said another of the campus's essential functions is the California Animal Health and Food Safety lab, because it handles all of the state's testing for avian influenza in animals.

After all such critical operations are identified, Lucus said, the next step will be to figure out "how are we going to keep all that working if we have 50 percent absenteeism for an indefinite length of time."

Students and their education present a whole other set of problems, Lucus said. For example, the university may have to decide at some point if students may be safer from the pandemic by staying at school or by going home.

"That's a decision that's going to have to be made at the time based on the information that's coming out about the pandemic's severity," she said.

The Academic Senate is addressing such issues as how to determine grades if students go home or if the campus is shut down, and how many classes can be canceled before courses are no longer good for credit.

For university employees, a key question is whether they will continue to be paid if the campus closes down. Human Resources, in a question-and-answer document posted online, states that employees "may be granted administrative leave with pay due to natural or other emergencies for the period of time authorized by the chancellor or associate vice chancellor [for] Human Resources."

The document also states that management has the right to make temporary changes in employees' assignments and shifts, can allow telecommuting and alternate schedules, and can require employees to report to work during a public health emergency; employees unable to report to work due to illness or injury may be required to provide medical documentation.

Lucus said Accounting and Financial Services can deliver data to the university's payroll bank, so it can issue checks that would be in the same amount as employees' previous checks — with adjustments to be made after the emergency.

"What they are working on now is how many people can do that and who should be cross-trained to make sure it happens," Lucus said.

The UC Davis News Service maintains an avian influenza news and information page, www.news.ucdavis.edu/special_reports/avian_flu. The page includes links to frequently asked questions, as well as campus planning documents.