Government Plans for Flu Pandemic

Pregnant women, babies and toddlers would join doctors, emergency workers and soldiers at the head of the line for scarce vaccine if a super-strain of flu triggers the next pandemic, says a draft U.S. government plan to be released Tuesday.

Once more vaccine is brewed, older children along with workers who keep the electricity, water and phones running could be next to roll up their sleeves.

At the end of the line: The elderly and healthy younger adults.

It is a priority list quite different from the usual winter pleas for older Americans to get vaccinated against regular flu. And it reflects growing agreement that curbing a super-flu would require protecting workers who care for the sick and maintain crucial services -- plus targeting the people most likely to spread flu, not just die from it.

"Children are not only highly susceptible to influenza, children are also very good at spreading it," said William Raub, emergency planning chief at the Department of Health and Human Services. "Protecting them also protects those in the population."

The list will prove no surprise to state and local health authorities struggling to plan how they would ration vaccine for a panicked population. The Bush administration has long signaled its key priority groups.

But the new draft plan puts a rationale for step-by-step vaccination to paper, opening it to formal debate before the list is finalized -- not as set-in-stone rules, but as guidelines for states.

"Some local discretion is going to be imperative here," Raub said.

Pandemics can strike when the easy-to-mutate flu virus shifts to a strain that people have never experienced. Scientists cannot predict when the next pandemic will arrive, although concern is rising that the Asian bird flu known as H5N1 might trigger one if it starts spreading easily from person to person.

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