States Have Their Own Plans for Bird Flu

A farm employee who did not want to be identified, shows the place where a rooster died with bird flu symptoms near the city of Marilia, 450 kilometers (280 miles) northwest of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday, Nov. 3, 2005. The disease threatens the huge chicken industry in Brazil, which has exported US$2.5 billion (EUR2.1 billion) worth of chicken so far this year, surpassing the United States as the world's leading exporter. (AP Photo/Alexandre Meneghini) (Alexandre Meneghini - AP)

WASHINGTON -- States have their own ideas for dealing with an outbreak of bird flu or other super-flu strain _ readying possible quarantine sites and talking about closing schools and businesses.

State officials may tell hospitals they may have to evict all but the most critically ill. Several states will ask residents to stay home and take a "snow day" if a pandemic strikes.

The stakes are enormous.

Texas, alone, estimates as many as a quarter-million of its people might die.

These details and more are spelled out in the pandemic preparedness plans that state governments have prepared in recent years. The Bush administration updated the federal blueprint for a pandemic response just this week.

Many states aren't sure yet how their plan would mesh with what the federal government expects of them. However, they already have concerns about whether state and local governments have the resources to meet the Bush administration's goals.

For example, the Bush plan calls for states to spend $510 million for anti-flu drugs, which can reduce the severity of the flu.

"The plan is useful, and the planning process is useful, but what isn't occurring is any analysis to see whether the staffing required to do the plans is actually there," said Dr. Rex Archer, president of the National Association of County and City Health Officials. "That's the weakness with all of this. I'm afraid that probably 90 percent of the staffing at the state and local level is not there to carry out the plans."

The Bush plan does call for $100 million for state preparedness and planning, but Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, complained that the president's budget for this fiscal year proposed to cut $120 million from state public health agencies.

Texas' draft plan, released last week, assumes at least two waves of pandemic influenza will occur. It tells health care officials they may have to consider "non-standard approaches" to meet demand, including:

_Discharge of all but critically ill hospital patients.

_Using all available space and "less than code-compliance beds."