Protect your employees, your customers,
and your brand with
Zero Hour Health

A healthy workforce boosts productivity, lowers absenteeism, fosters a positive work environment, and most importantly, lowers the risk to your company's brand and reputation.

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Trusted by the top names in business + hospitality

Health Crisis Prevention + Management
For Modern Businesses

Whether you have a growing hospitality group or a major nationwide concept, it’s imperative that you protect your reputation and brand loyalty from illness, outbreaks, and other health crises.

Zero Hour Health’s team of advisors will help you prevent and manage your risk so your team can focus on growing the business.

Advisory from the most knowledgeable industry experts, 24/7/365.

Whether it’s navigating a foodborne illness outbreak, receiving guidance on best practices with your local health department, or general questions about your employees’ health, we’re here to keep you, your staff, and your business safe.
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Detecting and preventing illnesses, before they go public.

The best way to stop a crisis is to prevent it from becoming one in the first place. We’ll help you create a culture of safe working, detect problematic illnesses before they spread, and, most importantly, keep your business out of the news.
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Protecting the most important asset in your businesses: your brand.

An outbreak is one of the few crises that can permanently damage a brand. From local news, to the nightly news, to the trading floors, your reputation is the foundation of your business and its value. Protecting that asset is a top priority.
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Screening and assisting the hiring process for at-risk positions.

Whether you need to do physical examinations to ensure a prospective employee can do the job, or your industry regulations call for a battery of exams, we streamline this process and handle it for every step of the way. Save time, hire quicker, and protect yourself against workers' comp claims.
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A suite of services to support every aspect of your operations.

This is just a core breakdown of the main services we provide to our clients. We build highly customized solutions to support any need you have.

ZHH Pro

ZHH Pro is our industry-best advisory service. We tailor our support to solve your most pressing needs, whether you've got 6 locations or 600 locations. We can provide 24/7/365, high-level clinical support to keep your business running.
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Wellness Checks

The single best way to prevent illness in the workplace is to prevent sick employees from showing up in the first place. ZHH Wellness Checks are the best solution to identify and assess potentially sick employees.
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Vaccination Programs

From Flu to Hep A, vaccinations are a vital part of keeping your workforce healthy. We help businesses identify employee immunization history, track their records, and facilitate vaccinations both on-site and off.
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Exams & Regulatory Testing

Ensure that potential employees are fit to perform their roles safely and effectively using our industry-best pre-employment programs. We help employers maintain compliance with stringent industry standards and regulations without adding friction to the hiring process.
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Inbox
February 7, 2025
Super (Bowl) Spreader? 🏈🦠

Flash Briefing and Q&A on H5N1 Bird Flu on Thursday, 2/13!

Join us on Thursday, February 13th at 2pm ET (11am Pacific) for a Flash Briefing and Q&A about H5N1 Bird Flu.

We've heard your questions! We're here to give you the latest updates on bird flu - from egg supply to new strains in dairy cows to human case updates. We'll go over why we're not yet panicking about a human pandemic, and what it would take for us to raise the alarm.

Register Here!

Bird Flu News:

  • Cows in Nevada have been infected with the D1.1 genotype of bird flu, indicating another unique spillover event from wild birds. (NY Times)
  • CDC published a Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report this week, but without three bird flu studies that were expected before the communications pause... (Washington Post)
  • …but CDC appears to have accidentally posted data for a few minutes from one of those H5N1 studies, which indicates that an infected cat may have passed the virus to a human in their household and vice versa. (NY Times)
  • Bird flu has hit nearly 23 million birds in Ohio in the past month. (WKYC)
  • Researchers are working on antibody treatments for bird flu, with promising results in primate trials. (CBS)

Health News:

  • Flu is peaking for the second time this season, with well over 7% of doctor’s visits due to flu-like illness (among the highest we’ve seen in 20+ years) and over 38,000 people hospitalized with flu last week. (CIDRAP)
  • Flu hotspots are across the South and Northeast, especially New York City. (Force of Infection)
  • Argentina says it will follow the U.S.’s example and pull out of the WHO. (AP)
  • The Ebola outbreak in Uganda has grown to 7 cases. (CIDRAP)
  • Federal workers at HHS and CDC are concerned after a website called “DEI Watch List” has called out “targets” who have worked on diversity and inclusion projects, mostly black employees. (NBC)
  • A measles outbreak in Gaines County, TX, is growing, with up to 18 confirmed and suspected cases. It’s one of the least vaccinated areas in the country. (KFF Health News)
  • Legionella was found in a Baltimore hospital’s water supply. (Baltimore Sun)
  • The FDA is investigating a new outbreak of Salmonella Enteritidis with 18 cases and no known source yet. (FDA)
  • The Office of Climate Change and Health Equity at the HHS has been shuttered and staff placed on administrative leave. (Scientific American)

Best Questions

What can we do to balance skepticism about Super Bowl Monday call-outs and off-the-charts flu and noro right now?

The big game is this weekend, which means one thing for managers responsible for staffing: Super Bowl Monday is coming. It’s a day dreaded for its last-minute call-outs and scheduling nightmares. A yearly survey estimates that 22.6 million people plan to miss work the day after the Super Bowl, and another 12.9 million Americans say they’ll go to work late that Monday. But at the same time, flu is at a 22-year high with its second peak of the season, and norovirus is also having a record year. To make things worse, Super Bowl parties may actually be super spreader events, so it’s not easy to assume all illnesses are just hangovers. We highly recommend staffing up enough for a higher-than-usual number of callouts on Monday. The ZHH clinical team asks explicit questions like “Are your symptoms due to hangover?” on Super Bowl Monday and other common days for calling out, and we do find that it can help differentiate between actual illness and those who just partied a little too hard. Managers can also proactively ask employees if they plan to take time off after the game to help with proper staffing and reduce same-day call-outs.

Source: CDC, CIDRAP, Axios, UKG

What does it mean that cows are infected with a second form of bird flu?

Up until now, all of the dairy cows infected with H5N1 have had the same genotype, B3.13. It’s likely that there was a single spillover event back in winter 2023 or early 2024, where an infected bird got a cow sick, probably somewhere in Texas. From there, cows spread it to each other, over and over - and to some cats and humans along the way. Birds have been sick with H5N1 for a lot longer and with lots more genotypes, including D1.1, which has been the dominant strain among birds in the U.S. this year. That’s the same strain that both the Louisiana patient who died and the severely ill Canadian teenager had. Recently, some milk samples from Nevada tested positive, and this week, the USDA confirmed that there have been four D1.1 detections in dairy herds there.

This is the second known spillover event in the U.S. where cows became ill from contact with wild birds. This could, and at this rate probably will, continue to happen.

Cows could theoretically be re-infected with different strains, which we’ve seen happening on poultry farms already. And because D1.1 was the strain involved in the two most severe North American cases, there’s some concern that if this continues to spread between cows, the human farm workers who interact with them may have more severe symptoms, but there’s no evidence of that at this point.

We are still not panicking about the impact on humans here. We would need to see evidence that farm workers who interacted with these sick cows are having different, more severe symptoms before we worry too much about this. But this doesn’t bode well for the dairy industry, which may see darker days ahead.

For more info on bird flu, join us next Thursday at 2pm ET for a quick briefing and Q&A via Zoom. Register here!

Sources: CIDRAP, NY Times, CDC

Best Read:

Our most dreaded holiday is here - Super Bowl Monday! The big day after the big game is a headache for managers, but there’s continued progress with managers and their employees having more open conversations about taking time, planning to come in late, or swapping shifts to cover the business. The good news - only 2% plan to pretend that they’re sick on Monday:

It’s a New Record! Estimated 22.6 Million U.S. Employees Plan to Miss Work Super Bowl Monday | Business Wire

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"Partnering with ZHH was a game changer. The transparency, visibility, technology, consistency, and time spent on supporting our business, it's as if all the stars aligned and it just made sense. We are big fans."
“Zero Hour Health helps ensure the wellness of our team members and guests. The trusted service helps with industry relationships and is integral to our investment in food safety across the organization. “
"When any potential health crisis arises, we turn to Zero Hour Health to help coordinate the clinical resources necessary- testing, confirming diagnoses and vaccinating employees.  Their relationships with health departments have proven critical to Texas Roadhouse.  ZHH is an invaluable partner to our brand and we can't imagine operating without them."

Let’s talk about how ZHH can revolutionize your medical surveillance program!

Schedule a time with our team to discuss your unique challenges and how we can help!

Every company and organization has factors that make their program different, but Zero Hour Health works with your team to tailor a program that solves all of your pain points.
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