President Bush on Wednesday laid out the details of his flu pandemic preparedness plan and assigned 300 tasks to various government agencies that would battle any major outbreak of the avian flu.
“We have made major investments in vaccine and antiviral development,” Bush said in a letter to Americans. “The federal government has begun strengthening our ability to safeguard the American people in the event of a devastating global pandemic.”
Bush first unveiled his plan to battle avian flu in November, when he called on Congress to spend $7.1 billion in preparations. Wednesday’s 227-page update was called “too little, too late” by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
“Other nations have been implementing their plans for years, while we are waiting to read ours for the first time today,” Kennedy said. “The United States is at the back of the line in ordering essential flu medicines and we’re at the bottom of the international league in having a coordinated national strategy.”
Homeland Security Adviser Fran Townsend said the Bush administration “assembled the best and brightest of health professionals” to devise the plan. But she warned that not all questions about avian flu have been answered.
“We do not know whether the bird virus that we are seeing overseas will ever become a human virus,” she told reporters at the White House. “And we cannot predict whether a human virus will lead to a pandemic.”
“Moreover, there is no way to predict how severe a pandemic would be,” she said. “In the plan, we describe a wide spectrum of severity, and we are candid that we should understand and prepare the worst-case scenario.”
Indeed, the plan says a large outbreak would sideline 40 percent of the American work force for two weeks. The government would impose travel restrictions, although the plan acknowledged that even closing U.S. borders would not guarantee containment of the disease.
Still, Bush expressed optimism.
“Our nation will face this global threat united in purpose and united in action in order to best protect our families, our communities, our nation, and our world from the threat of pandemic influenza,” he said.
