The potential impact of the next influenza pandemic on a national primary care medical workforce

The model in the "FluAid" software (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, CDC, Atlanta) was applied to the New Zealand primary care medical workforce (i.e., general practitioners).At its peak (week 4) the pandemic would lead to 1.2% to 2.7% loss of medical work time, using conservative baseline assumptions. Most workdays (88%) would be lost due to illness, followed by hospitalisation (8%), and then premature death (4%).Inputs for a "more severe" scenario included greater health effects and time spent caring for sick relatives. For this scenario, 9% of medical workdays would be lost in the peak week, and 3% over a more compressed six-week period of the first pandemic wave. As with the base case, most (64%) of lost workdays would be due to illness, followed by caring for others (31%), hospitalisation (4%), and then premature death (1%).Preparedness planning for future influenza pandemics must consider the impact on this medical workforce and incorporate strategies to minimise this impact, including infection control measures, well-designed protocols, and improved health sector surge capacity.It is probably only a matter of time before the next influenza pandemic. The only uncertainties are its timing and impact. Effective planning for public health interventions before and during a pandemic is likely to reduce its impact [1]. A pandemic is likely to be extremely disruptive, particularly for the health sector. Not only will there be a surge in demand for health services (preventive as well as curative), but the health workforce is likely to have higher exposure and incidence rates.We estimated for the impact of pandemic influenza on the primary care medical workforce (i.e., general practitioners) for a single country – New Zealand. The estimates inform planning for the pandemic as well as for other new emerging infectious disease threats, including those from bioterrorism, by providing some estimates for the level of "surge capacity" that must be built into the h