N.J. Has Tamiflu to Treat 18,500 in Case of Outbreak

By Mary Jo Layton, The Record, Hackensack, N.J.

Nov. 3–The state has enough Tamiflu to treat 18,500 people if bird flu breaks out, health officials said Wednesday after assessing President Bush’s $7.1 billion plan to fight a super-bug pandemic.

The supply of Tamiflu, part of New Jersey’s strategic stockpile of anti-viral medications and antibiotics, would have to grow significantly under the new federal guidelines — and could cost New Jersey as much as $37.5 million, said Dr. Eddy Bresnitz, state epidemiologist.

“Where is this money going to come from?” said Bresnitz, who assigned several staffers to review the federal plan. “I’m sure the states aren’t going to be very happy about this.”

With a public increasingly jittery about the spread of avian flu among birds and a drumbeat of criticism that the nation is woefully unprepared, Bush this week outlined a strategy to prepare for the next pandemic.

Topping his list is improving systems to detect and contain the next super-flu before it reaches the United States — and overhauling the vaccine industry so that millions of Americans could be inoculated within six months of an outbreak.

The government’s strategy makes clear that a large-scale outbreak anywhere in the world could lead to the imposition of travel restrictions, school closings, isolation of the infected and restrictions on public gatherings.

It’s impossible to predict the toll of the next pandemic, but a severe one could infect up to a third of the population and, depending on its virulence, kill anywhere from 209,000 to 1.9 million Americans, according to the Bush administration’s new Pandemic Influenza Plan.

Concern is rising that the bird flu, particularly a strain called H5N1, may trigger the next pandemic if it mutates so that it can spread from person to person rather than bird to human. It has killed at least 62 people in Asia and caused the death or destruction of tens of millions of birds since 2003

As part of its response plan, the federal government on Wednesday identified the priority groups for vaccine and antiviral treatment. Vaccine plant workers, front-line medical officials, pregnant women, key government leaders, people who have at least one high-risk health condition or whose household includes an infant or someone with a severely compromised immune system |will be vaccinated first if an influenza pandemic sweeps the planet.

Those who are not in that group of about 46 million people won’t make the cut for the first round of vaccines.

The plan stresses that if a pandemic begins, Americans should limit visits to doctors and hospitals unless absolutely necessary and hospitals should evaluate those seeking care so that suspected super-flu cases have limited contact with other patients.

Most of the cost to better prepare the nation for a pandemic would be devoted to new technologies that could produce enough vaccine to inoculate 300 million Americans, administration officials said Wednesday.

The new approaches “will give us the capacity to produce vaccine in the amounts and constraints of time that we need to respond to a pandemic, but will also expand our capacity to respond to the annual flu outbreaks,” said Mike Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services.

So far, the Bush administration has secured delivery of about 4.3 million doses of Tamiflu. It has about 8 million more doses on order. The government has also signed a $100 million contract with the French company Sanofi Pasteur to develop a bird flu vaccine.

Meanwhile, local health officials and countless doctors have fielded calls from anxious patients, eager to receive their regular seasonal flu shots, many mistakenly believing the vaccine will protect them from avian flu.

“People don’t understand the current vaccine will give them no protection against that,” said Bergen County Health Officer Stephen Tiffinger.

Bergen County has provided about 6,500 doses of seasonal flu vaccine for residents in 28 municipalities, Tiffinger said. Another 5,000 doses are expected to arrive beginning next week, he said.

Officials do not expect a repeat of last year’s lotteries for the vaccine, when a severe shortage forced rationing across the country.

“I think there will be enough for anybody who wants it,” said John Christ, Hackensack’s health officer. So far, the city has administered 400 doses at four clinics. Another 200 residents have signed up for their flu vaccine next week, the maximum the session can handle, Christ said.

If New Jersey follows the new federal plan for a pandemic, the state would be required to stockpile enough anti-flu medication such as Tamiflu and Relenza to treat an estimated 930,000 residents, Bresnitz said. The state has already spent $1 million on current supplies of Tamiflu. The drug is not a vaccine, but rather an effective treatment when taken for five days starting within 24 hours of infection.

A spokesman for Hoffman-La Roche Inc., the Nutley-based maker of Tamiflu, said Wednesday that the company has met with a handful of drug makers who could potentially manufacturer the anti-flu treatment to bolster production.

One of those is Barr Laboratories Inc. whose administrative offices are located in Woodcliff Lake.

“Our efforts are focusing on those companies who are most likely to have the specialist technical skills required to manufacture Tamiflu,” said spokesman Terry Hurley.

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