U.S. not ready for bird flu, officials say

WASHINGTON — The United States is making fast progress in preparing for a bird-flu pandemic, including measures to close down schools and quarantine the sick, but vaccine supplies remain inadequate, health officials said Sunday.

"We've got a lot of work to do," said Dr. Julie Gerberding, director of the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, citing "bottlenecks" in vaccine production and the delivery of health care if there's an outbreak.

"We've got to get more and better anti-viral drugs. And we've got to have every single link in our public health system as strong as it can be so it can detect this problem," she said on CBS' "Face the Nation."

"Frankly, we're not as prepared as we need to be," Gerberding said. "We're certainly doing more today than we were even two years ago, so we're making fast progress."

A strain of a bird flu that has killed more than 70 people in Asia since it first appeared two years ago has sparked concerns of a superflu that could kill millions of people worldwide. Almost all the victims were in close contact with poultry.

While stressing that chances remain slight, health experts have said that if the virus mutates to a form that can spread easily among people, it could lead to a global pandemic. The U.S., which has not seen any signs of the strain in birds or people, has enough doses of anti-viral drugs for only 4.3 million people.

Gerberding said measures to combat a bird-flu pandemic in the U.S. and worldwide would include isolating the sick and their immediate contacts. That might entail closing schools, large meetings or otherwise separating the afflicted from the rest of the community.

But she added: "I don't think any of us are thinking about those kinds of draconian measures to really completely quarantine a community or even quarantine a country."

President Bush last week signed a bill that gives $3.8 billion to prepare for a bird-flu pandemic and liability protections for flu-drug manufacturers.

The administration is working under the worst-case scenario that as many as 90 million Americans would become ill and 2 million would die in a pandemic.

Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, appearing on CNN's "Late Edition," said the money approved by Congress is a good step that will fund one year of preparedness efforts.

Still, he said the U.S. is not ready, saying additional money is needed to ensure there would be enough vaccine supplies for all Americans within six months of an initial outbreak. State and local governments also need to step up efforts, Leavitt said.

"Don't count on Washington, D.C., to manage your pandemic because it will be about your schools, it will be about your parades. You need a plan," Leavitt said.