Sometime in 2005:
The preface includes this text:
A few weeks later, the first local outbreaks are reported from other continents. Rates of absenteeism in schools and businesses begin to rise. Phones at health departments ring constantly. The spread of the new virus continues to be the major news item in print and electronic media. Citizens start to clamour for vaccines, but they are still not available. Antiviral drugs cannot be obtained. Police departments, local utility companies and mass transit authorities experience significant personnel shortages that result in severe disruption of routine services. Soon, hospitals and outpatient clinics are critically short-staffed as doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers themselves become ill or are afraid to come to work. Fearing infection, elderly patients with chronic medical conditions do not dare to leave home. Intensive care units at local hospitals are overwhelmed, and soon there are insufficient ventilators for the treatment of pneumonia patients. Parents are distraught when their healthy young adult sons and daughters die within days of first becoming ill. Several major airports close because of high absenteeism among air traffic controllers. Over the next 6–8 weeks, health and other essential community services deteriorate further as the pandemic sweeps across the world.
Source:
- 2005. World Health Organization. “WHO Checklist for Influenza Pandemic Preparedness Planning.” WHO/CDS/CSR/GIP/2005.4.
https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/68980/WHO_CDS_CSR_GIP_2005.4.pdf.
World Health Organization, PDF.