If a flu pandemic swept the population of the United States, the government said Wednesday that essential health care workers would be the first to be immunized.
If a pandemic emerged, the Department of Health and Human Services released much anticipated details on who would get vaccinated.
“This guidance is the result of a deliberative democratic process,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said in a statement. “This document represents the best of shared responsibility and decision-making.”
One million health care workers, such as emergency room staff and nurses, are at the top of the list, according to the plan. The next priority is military and “mission critical” personnel, public health workers and hospital and nursing home staff.
The plan reads, all of these people assume a “critical role in providing care for the sickest persons; highest risk of exposure and occupational infection.”
The plan did meet opposition.
Mike Osterholm, an infectious disease expert at the University of Minnesota’s Centers for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, said the plan did not do enough to protect critical workers.
Osterholm said, the plan protects people involved in making vaccines and drugs for flu, but it leaves out drugs such as insulin and antibiotics.
“It does nothing to help support the manufacturing and transportation system for moving these drugs from offshore to the United States,” said Osterholm, who advised the government on the guidelines.
Many public health experts agree some sort of influenza pandemic is inevitable, although no one can predict when it may hit, and how many it could affect.
H5N1 avian influenza is the main pandemic suspect. It has recently become entrenched in birds in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and possibly Africa. Although it’s impossible to predict what strain of flu might cause it.
Since 2003, 385 people have been infected and 243 have died. Experts worry H5N1 could acquire the ability to spread easily from human to human. Some believe that would set off a pandemic that could kill hundreds of millions of people.
Manufacturing enough vaccine to protect everyone would take months. Experts put together a plan to determine who gets the first factory doses.
The HHS plan said 700,000 key health workers identified as critical, will be followed by 300,000 public health workers, 5.7 million inpatient and outpatient health care providers, and 1.6 million long-term care workers would be next to get the vaccine.
The plan said, “It should be noted that during the 1918 pandemic, more American soldiers died of illness than in combat during the First World War.”
The first designated groups also include emergency services, law enforcement, makers of pandemic vaccines and drugs, pregnant women and babies.
HHs said the plan would be changed depending on the characteristics of any real pandemic.
The last remaining group on the priority list is healthy adults.
There is a limited supply of antiviral drugs, but they can help protect people. To prevent the transmission of the flu, the U.S. plan would close schools and limit public gatherings.
At least 16 manufacturers in 10 countries are working on vaccines against H5N1.
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