U.S. to Send Smallpox Plan

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/09/23/national/23SMAL.html

U.S. to Send Smallpox Plan

By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN

fficials of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta said yesterday that they planned to send a detailed plan today to state and local health departments to deal with an outbreak of smallpox, should one occur.

The plan, which has been expected for several months, calls for the standard procedures for containing an outbreak of the disease through identification of a case and the individual's contacts and vaccinating them.

Julie L. Gerberding, director of the centers, said in an interview that the plan is the one that the agency had been developing over the last two years. The timing of the plan's release was reported in today's Washington Post.

Smallpox was declared eradicated worldwide in 1980, so health officials are operating on the assumption that any new case would represent a terrorist attack. If officials determined that the virus was released on a wide scale they would immediately move toward offering vaccination of the entire United States population. Under the worst-case scenario, each state would be expected to vaccinate its population within a week.

Because the vaccine is classified as "investigational" permission is required from any patient before receiving it. In the event mass vaccinations are offered, Dr. Gerberding said, the C.D.C. has prepared a videotape in which she explains the risks and benefits of the vaccine with the hope that the tape will ease the permission process.

Even without a smallpox case, the centers is developing plans to vaccinate up to a half-million emergency responders.

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