GFeM011_English: Pandemics and Serious Infectious Diseases

While the Security Management Team and guard force will typically not take a lead role during the outbreak of a serious infectious disease (such as COVID-19, Ebola, or a virulent strain of influenza), they will be part of the wider management response as such events have the potential to escalate quickly into a crisis situation if a location is unprepared, or fails to respond decisively and effectively to this potential or occurring risk. Compounding this, a disease outbreak may also be followed by civil disorder as people become frustrated with the perceived inadequacy of the government’s response, or where policing capacity is stretched and criminals seek to take advantage of weakened, or absent, law and order.