Are there protective steps that can help lessen the spread of pandemic flu?
Protective steps include: staying home if you’re sick, cancelling public events and closing schools. Protective steps buy time during a pandemic give us more time to produce vaccine and vaccinate people if vaccine exists. Reduce illness and death rates which equals saving lives. Decrease the surge of sick people helps lessen burden on critical infrastructure, hospitals and health care providers. However, these steps aren t a magic bullet. They can t prevent a community from being affected; they can t stop some people from getting sick and dying. ^ top of page Vaccine and Antivirals Can a vaccine be made to protect against pandemic flu? Vaccines against bird flu are already being made and tested. Experts are also testing new ways of making vaccine quickly. If pandemic flu occurs, we ll need a vaccine for the specific virus causing the pandemic. Flu viruses change constantly so there s little time to prepare a vaccine in advance. This new virus would be different from the current bird fl
