The retail industry will undergo havoc if the pandemic spreads through Europe. Manual labour will be cut down due to the inability to work of the employees. This will leave retailers in a jam. The governments advice to stay away from the virus could lead to a sudden dip in customers for many stores in the country. Quarantine rules would suspend delivery of goods on time.

With these developments taking place and the risk of the flu growing into a pandemic, the insurance industry is not doing enough. What they offer in such a turn of events will not suffice. Life assurance, sickness cover and the covering of business affected due to the hypothetical outbreak of the flu should be on the agenda of insurance companies.

According to WHO, the socio-economic impact of the flu will be the worst. They predict that a quarter of the manual workforce in the entire world to be affected and that would jeopardize the markets. Already because of SARS, a loss of 60 million US dollars has been incurred in only business revenue. In case of an outbreak, the affected trades would be mainly tourism, travel and trade because they would involve viruses spreading from people to people or from things to people. Employees will not able to come to work due to either sickness or family problems or even quarantine. The no. of people expected to fall sick by virtue of the disease has doubled from the average general rate of six percent. Businesses who depend on overseas suppliers face the risk of not having their goods coming in on time or maybe not coming at all which will inturn affect the gross profit. The economy will dip to a low.

A poll taken stated that business and business men do not have a plan-b if the flu strikes. The retail industry though sees this possibility and is raising awareness about it. They know that they will be one of the ones affected by it and are trying to prevent it. As a matter of fact, nobody is too concerned about it. Since insurance policies don’t protect companies well from communicable ailments according to present policies, the disaster would come and stay uninsured. Its time for business heads to wake up and smell the smoke. If they don’t take precautions, they will endanger their companies and their business future.

He opined that the studies and historic SARS experience reveals that not much is done to face the risks. He added that due to the limitations in business disruption cover for communicable ailments and the experience of SARS, a pandemic would be an uninsured event.  He said that emergency planning must be a major priority for directors, who risk weakening their business, shareholders and staff by not taking enough action to prevent or mitigate and action in the proper manner.