Businesses brace for swine flu - washingtonpost.com

As they continue to grapple with the economic crisis, Washington-area employers now should prepare for a possible health crisis in coming months from an H1N1 pandemic, federal and local officials warned Tuesday.

In this area, health officials said, reported cases of the virus, also known as swine flu, have remained relatively low, in contrast to such places as Memphis and Austin, where overwhelmed hospitals have been forced to set up tents in parking lots to handle the heavy patient caseload. Still, officials from the federal Department of Health and Human Services as well as the District, Maryland and Virginia warned employers to plan for a disaster with large numbers of their workers out sick and a possible disruption in their operation...