Do Your Employees Travel Internationally? Know How To Mitigate The Risks From The Zika Virus

Insurance Blog

If you have employees who travel internationally, there's a new health concern that you need to address: the Zika virus. Its potential affect on your employees and your business needs to be addressed. This is what you need to know about the Zika virus and what you can do to protect endangered employees as much as you can.

What is the Zika virus?

Zika virus is primarily spread through the bite of infected mosquitos, although it can be sexually transmitted as well. While there has been one death from the virus within the continental U.S. in late June, infected mosquitoes haven't been located inside U.S. borders as of yet. The victim had recently traveled to areas where the virus is known to be active.

Symptoms of the virus include:

• Rash
• Joint pain
• Redness in the whites of the eye
• Guillian-Barre syndrome, which is a type of paralysis of the lower extremities
• Flu-like symptoms

One of the most devastating effects of the Zika virus is microcephaly in the babies of women who contract the virus while pregnant. In many cases, the women may not have experienced severe symptoms themselves, so they may not be aware they were infected until after the baby is born.

What can you do to protect your employees who travel in Zika-infected areas?

It's important to understand that if your employee contracts the Zika virus while traveling for business, he or she would likely be covered under workers' compensation. You can talk to a lawyer, like John Mullen & Co., for more help. You can mitigate the risks to both your employee and business through employee education and risk-management strategies:

• Check the CDC website regularly to look for updated information on outbreak areas and limit employee travel to those areas as much as possible.
• Make as much use of electronic communication abilities, like audio and video conferencing, in lieu of having employees travel to infected areas.
• Consider restricting travel to infected areas as much as possible, especially by female employees of child-bearing age.
• Allow women of child-bearing age and those with autoimmune issues to opt-out of travel to affected countries without professional or financial repercussions.
• Educate employees on the symptoms of the disease and encourage any employee who thinks that they may have been infected to seek necessary medical care and testing.

In addition, it's important to make sure that you educate employees who can't avoid traveling to affected countries of the measures they can take to protect themselves against the virus. Employees should be aware of the possibility that the disease can be transmitted through bodily fluids as well as mosquito bites. They should also know that the mosquitoes known to carry the virus are aggressive daytime biters—especially since many people in the U.S. tend to think of mosquitoes as a nighttime problem. Encourage employees in affected areas to wear protective clothing and mosquito repellent as well.

Share

14 July 2016