FluWorkLoss

RESOURCE DESCRIPTION

FluWorkLoss is a public planning tool for pandemic influenza scenarios that estimates the potential number of days lost from work due to a pandemic. It is developed and used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and primarily intended for use by state and local public health officials or businesses to develop continuity of operations plans. It considers both work loss from personal illness and work loss from caring for ill family members. Outputs include the total number of workdays lost, a plot of the number of workdays lost per day of the pandemic, and a plot of the proportion of workdays lost (as a percentage of the total possible daily workdays) per day of the pandemic. For each of these outputs, three different values are reported: the minimum, most likely, and maximum severity estimates. These estimates are based on pessimistic, realistic, and optimistic internal assumptions made for the hospitalization and death rates. FluWorkLoss requires the local population size in three age groups (0-19, 20-64, and 65+ years) as input. Assumptions for the days lost from work due to (1) illness or (2) caring for a family member must also be provided, but have default values. The percent employment rate and the percent cohabit rate are also required, but have default values based on national averages.

BROAD DATA CATEGORIES

• Economy
• Disease metric

SPECIFIC DATA ELEMENTS

• Disease outbreak (natural)
• Flu