Rules Proposed to Fight Bioterrorism

The state has proposed new regulations aimed at identifying and curbing the spread of infectious disease linked to bioterrorism, including increasing the length of quarantine for people with smallpox.

Under the proposed regulations, which took effect on an emergency basis earlier this month, doctors and laboratories must report within an hour cases of smallpox, viral fevers such as Ebola and other pathogens likely to be used by bioterrorists.

Hearings on the regulations, meant to update a set of rules so old that they still allowed infectious diseases to be reported by telegraph, are scheduled for January.

If approved by the state office of administrative law, they will become permanent some time after that.

The new rules are part of a nationwide effort by states and the federal government to update public health laws, many of which were designed to combat health threats from a century ago.

In California, a state bioterrorism preparedness guide issued just last month criticized existing regulations in the state, saying that just three pathogens considered highly likely to be used by terrorists were among those that laboratories and doctors had to report immediately to public health authorities.

Those pathogens were anthrax, botulism and plague. Under the new rules, four additional conditions--smallpox, brucellosis, tularemia and viral hemorrhagic fevers such as Ebola--would be added to the list.

“These agents are most likely to be used because of their devastating physical and psychological effects,” and have the potential for high fatality rates, reads the introduction to the proposed regulations.

The changes represent the return of smallpox as a disease that must be tracked, a generation after it was believed eradicated and removed from most such lists.

Ken August, spokesman for the Department of Health Services, which issued the proposed regulations, said that heightened awareness of bioterrorism would have prompted most laboratories and providers to report such diseases immediately--even without a legal requirement to do so.

“What provider in California wouldn’t report a case of smallpox?” August asked. “But it’s valuable to have this as another hammer.”