CDC Panel Advises Offering Smallpox Shots

A federal committee voted Wednesday to recommend vaccinating about 510,000 hospital workers against smallpox, bringing its earlier proposal closer to the Bush administration’s suggestion.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted 8 to 1 for the plan, which amounts to vaccinating about 100 workers at every hospital in the nation that could handle smallpox patients.

Those receiving shots at the hospitals with “negative pressure rooms” would include emergency room doctors, nurses, technicians and selected security and housekeeping workers.

The vaccine can cause dangerous side effects, even death, in a fraction of patients. Smallpox has been declared eradicated, but some experts fear terrorists may have samples of the virus and could use it as a devastating biological weapon.

The recommendation is not binding; the final decision will be made by the White House.

Under a plan considered by the Bush administration, vaccinations would first be offered to emergency room workers, with about 510,000 expected to take it, then it would be available to about 10 million health-care and emergency workers, and finally to the public.