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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Anthony Fauci
Aired December 01, 2001 - 11:31 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: Since the anthrax attacks, many Americans wonder if another disease could be unleashed. This week, President Bush approved a deal to buy millions of doses of the smallpox vaccine. Should the U.S. mandate this kind of vaccination? Here to discuss this, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Good morning to you, sir.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NIAID: Good morning.
SAVIDGE: Well, should it be mandated? Should people be worried about going out there and getting a vaccine for smallpox?
FAUCI: Well, there's no plan for it and most health officials, myself included, feel that it should not be mandated at this particular time to have compulsory vaccination for smallpox when we get the stores high enough to be able to vaccinate everyone.
We're still in the process right now of getting the stores so that we can make a decision if that decision is necessary in the future. The problem with mandatory vaccination right now is that the toxicities, or the side effects, of a smallpox vaccine are not trivial.
If we're in the middle of a smallpox threat or an actual smallpox event, then the risk-benefit ratio definitely leans towards doing that. If we're in a situation where there's only a theoretical threat, and in fact there may be one or two cases that emerge, the classical public health way of approaching that is what the CDCs plan to do, is to identify, isolate, quarantine and then do what's called ring vaccination, where you vaccinate the contacts of the individuals and then a secondary ring of the contacts of the contacts, traditionally.
SAVIDGE: The scary thing here seems to be, you know, we need the vaccine. We've ordered a lot of it, but do we have enough right now if there were to be some sort of outbreak? How much actually exists, and can they expand -- or I've heard talk of diluting some of it to spread it farther.
FAUCI: Yes, there are a couple of things going on at the same time, simultaneously. We are in the middle of a clinical trial which very soon, within the next month, certainly by January, will let us know whether or not these stores of 15 million doses that we have now in the federal reserve can be expanded, for example, in a one-to-five dilution to over 70 million, 75 million doses.
The preliminary data so far indicate that that likely will be the case, but we need to wait for the end of the experiment. If that is the case, then we'll have a substantial amount of vaccine.
Second, there's a contract that's just been let by the federal government, Secretary Thompson at the Department of Health and Human Services, to contract for an additional 155 million doses. We're going to have, by the end of the fall of the year 2002, have enough doses.
SAVIDGE: That seems a long way away.
FAUCI: No, it doesn't. That's not the case. That's not the case, because if in fact there is an outbreak of cases -- a few cases -- you would do -- what the CDC approach is, is to do the ring vaccination. You don't have to vaccinate every man, woman and child in the country if you have a couple of cases of smallpox cropping up.
The only time you do everybody in the country is if there is unquestionable intelligence that there's going to be a massive attack of smallpox on the country in a multi-focal way. And there's no indication by any intelligence that that's going to happen.
Now that doesn't mean that you don't want to be prepared for it, which is the reason why the stores are being built up so that in case that very, very unusual possibility occurs, we'll have it.
But the threat now with intelligence is not that there's going to be a massive attack of smallpox, which is the reason given the toxicities that are associated with it, that even if we had it right now, we would not preemptively vaccinate everybody in the country.
SAVIDGE: Got it, all right. Dr. Anthony Fauci, appreciate you putting it in the right perspective for us. Thank you very much. He is the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Again, our thanks.
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