Lessons learned from the Zika outbreak: what do they mean for the next big outbreak?

Why now is the time for corporations to prepare, assess and manage risk

Lessons learned from the Zika outbreak: what do they mean for the next big outbreak?

Risk Management News

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The 2016 global outbreak of Zika caught the international public health community and the world by surprise. Zika was previously thought to be a fairly innocuous virus and by the time scientists recognized Zika could have severe outcomes, including birth defects and Guillain-Barre syndrome, the virus had already spread widely in South America. The public reacted by cancelling flights, changing vacation destinations, and avoiding areas with known transmission risk leading to major social and economic disruption. The unexpected spread and newly discovered symptoms associated with Zika demonstrated gaps in the international community’s ability to prepare, respond to, and manage pathogens of epidemic and pandemic potential. Epidemiologists from Metabiota, the provider of epidemic risk modeling, discuss the 2016 Zika outbreak, the decline in cases, and why now is the time for corporations to prepare, assess and manage risk before the next global-impacting outbreak.

Jaclyn Guerrero: Hey Patrick, I can’t believe we have already hit summer, also known as mosquito season. Have you seen some of the recent articles on increased transmission of vector-borne diseases? Looks like as we hit the beach this summer we should be grabbing mosquito repellant as well as sunscreen!

Patrick Ayscue: Ha! That’s probably not a bad idea. Have you been following the Zika news this year, too? It looks like the numbers are quite a bit lower in the Western hemisphere after all the activity in the last few years.

JG: I have seen that but with the decrease in cases, there really hasn’t been much news about current Zika cases. It is hard to imagine that it was just two years ago when people were canceling trips and avoiding areas where there was Zika transmission. Now it seems like Zika is hardly on people’s minds which is alarming because the risk of Zika transmission remains. What are some of the biggest lessons that you took away from the recent outbreak?

PA: Two things really stick out to me. One is that we don’t know what or where the next large outbreak will be, and it can come from unexpected places. We have known about Zika since 1947 and had never seen any strong indication it was anything other than a mild febrile illness. We don’t know where the next event will happen, and we should move to prepare for the inevitability of another large outbreak.

The second is a reminder of how many downstream impacts we can see from infectious disease outbreaks. While we didn’t see borders shutting down, quarantines, or canceling of major events in this instance, we did see a lot of behavior change with people electing to avoid impacted areas. Zika is typically a relatively minor illness, but families were devastated by some of the newly appreciated, severe birth defects, and the resulting news coverage led to an understandable fear response. You have done some work looking at implications for the hospitality industry in the region. How bad was it? And what other sectors do you think are likely to be impacted in future events from potentially more severe diseases?

JG: It was bad - we saw losses due to Zika in almost all of the markets in the region that we evaluated including Rio de Janeiro, Puerto Rico, Cabo San Lucas, Cancun, Miami and Singapore. The brunt of the outbreak hit corporations in the hospitality industry - losses in hotel occupancy rates ranged from 6-17% in these markets, though there were certainly other markets that experienced losses due to Zika that we did not assess.

Beyond hotels, any industry in which people are deterred from their day-to-day activities could be impacted by a health crisis, including restaurants and entertainment. In some extreme cases, we have seen losses to the healthcare industry as people stop visiting hospitals and clinics for fear of getting sick.

PA: It’s interesting. The time in between major outbreaks is when you want to prepare for the next one. We’re seeing governments start to appreciate the need for additional investment in disease surveillance and response capabilities after recent outbreaks caused by Ebola, Zika, and other agents. You definitely don’t want to try to build the airplane while you fly it. Thinking about the impacts from Zika makes me think about other risk holders as well. It seems now is the time for corporate risk holders to manage and mitigate the intrinsic risk on their books for epidemic events as well.

JG: This is certainly a new approach to preparing and responding to outbreaks. The risk of infectious disease outbreaks has been previously difficult to measure - especially the secondary impacts of infectious disease outbreaks. However, there are major improvements to the field with data-driven risk analytics.

PA: That’s a good point. I think it’s also becoming clearer that in order to better prepare for the potential financial losses from these epidemic events, public health officials, countries and corporations must understand epidemic risk so that it can be assessed, planned for and managed more closely. I think what we’re starting to see as well is that with data, expertise, resources and investment, now – more than ever before – it is possible for the public and private sectors to take actions to measure the potential impact and mitigate the threat of these risks. We may not know when or where the next major outbreak will occur, but I’m cautiously optimistic as we continue to see more tools developed to help ensure we’re better prepared to handle it.

While Zika may no longer be headline news and cases have fallen, the threat of Zika remains. International agencies and companies should use this time as an opportunity to implement preparedness and response measures that were effective in the past and should begin exploring new ways to protect their businesses and employees. We are in a new age of outbreak response and there are now options to quantify and plan for epidemic risk that weren’t available during the 2016 Zika outbreak. Any outbreak, especially fear-inducing outbreaks like Zika, have the potential to cause international panic and cause social and economic losses to cities, industries, and individual companies. Now is the time to act to not be taken by surprise with another outbreak.

 

The above article was an opinion piece from Jaclyn Guerrero, MPH and Patrick Ayscue, DVM - Metabiota epidemiologists. The views expressed within the article are not necessarily reflective of those of Corporate Risk and Insurance.

 

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