The Washington Post reports:
More than two dozen states, including Maryland, as well as the District, have not stocked enough of the emergency supplies of antiviral medications considered necessary to treat victims of swine flu should the outbreak become a full-blown crisis, according to federal records. . .
The Strategic National Stockpile, created during the Clinton administration a decade ago to provide a federally coordinated response to disasters, maintains a massive collection of antibiotics, vaccines, gas masks and other supplies in a dozen secret locations. The program was expanded in 2004 to include drugs needed in a pandemic and is designed to link with stockpiles kept by state governments, pharmaceutical companies and federal agencies.
But the District, Maryland and 26 other states are 10 million dosages short of the levels that the federal government has determined they should have in their stockpiles for a pandemic. The drugs — in this case, Tamiflu and Relenza — would be used to treat the illness, not to prevent it.
(Via the Corner.)
Unfortunately, the article does not give the list, beyond saying that Maryland and DC are on it and Virginia is not, and they don’t link to the full list either. That’s quite an omission for a national paper.
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