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medpundit |
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Thursday, December 05, 2002My dad is a physician in NJ and says that NJ is in fact prepared with pretty elaborate contingency plans and that he has been contact by state authorities and informed as to what his role will be. If a case is confirmed in NJ, an immediate state of emergency goes into effect, all schools, etc., are closed, and all "first responders" and medical personnel immediately vaccinated. Then all school children get vaccinated (he hadn't been informed about exceptions, etc.), then everyone else. Supposedly all medical personnel would be mobilized to vaccinate about 8 million people within 30 days. Apparently the key is that the state would go into an immediate "lockdown" mode for some number of days or hours (undisclosed) to try to keep the cases from spreading. That's good. And from the state's department of health website, it looks to be true. Some states have been busy implementing bioterror plans and communicating with the physicians in the community, others haven't. For example, here's my state's bioterrorism webpage for healthcare professionals. It was last updated November 2001. UPDATE: The union for healthcare workers says they won't oppose smallpox vaccination of same workers. posted by Sydney on 12/05/2002 05:27:00 AM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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