The U.S. national smallpox immunization plan has effectively stalled, forcing local and regional officials to make plans for immunizing health workers primarily after a bioterrorist smallpox attack, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, May 7).

Although federal officials originally expected up to 500,000 health care workers to volunteer for the vaccine, only 35,000 have stepped forward so far and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now believes that 50,000 volunteers is a more realistic estimate, the Post reported.

“It’s kind of like war,” said Lynn Frank, a local Maryland official, adding, “You try one thing.  It doesn’t work, so you try something else.”

“As we get further and further away from the conflict in Iraq, it’s my sense there are going to be fewer and fewer people who will want to be vaccinated,” said Thomas Calhoun, medical director of the Emergency Health and Medical Services Administration for the Washington, D.C. Health Department.

Washington’s health department is looking for volunteers, retired doctors, pharmacists and dentists who could administer the vaccine after an attack.

“We’re going to go ahead and do this because the numbers are just not coming in, and if we’re going to wait — God forbid something happened — we wouldn’t have enough people trained,” Calhoun said.

Local health officials are now preparing to immunize the public on short notice, if the need arises.

State and local health departments have plans in place to receive additional shipments of the smallpox vaccine “on very short notice,” according to Lisa Kaplowitz, deputy commissioner for emergency preparedness and response at the Virginia Health Department.

“We’re talking hours,” Kaplowitz said (Christian Davenport, Washington Post, May 12).

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