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WASHINGTON-More than a year after President Bush unveiled a plan for coping with a pandemic flu outbreak,the federal government still has limited capacity to detect a disease outbreak and track its progress across the country.The government has also decided that it will not close the borders if a pandemic flu outbreak occurs somewhere in the world.“The reality is that there are tremendous challenges to sealing our borders to begin with,”said Dr. Rajeev Venkayya,special assistant to the president for biodefense.“Secondly,we believe that if a pandemic virus emerges anywhere in the globe,it is inevitable that it will arrive here in the U.S. irrespective of the actions we take at the borders.”The government will try to limit the number of arriving people who might be infected with the virus and detain those suspected of harboring the virus,Dr. Venkayya said.But it will also try to allow the flow of goods and people across the border to continue,he said.In the coming weeks,officials will release the government’s priority list detailing who will get the first lots of flu vaccines in the event of an outbreak.Plans to coordinate with state and local governments about when to close schools are also still in the works,they said.These updates were delivered Tuesday in a White House briefing on the government’s progress in preparing the nation for an outbreak of a deadly infectious disease.Top officials emphasized that significant planning and investment decisions had already been made, including a $1 billion investment in finding new ways to manufacture flu vaccines.A nationwide surveillance system to track the progress of an outbreak as it moves around the world and across the country still needs considerable work, officials said.“Just to be brutally honest, we have a lot of trouble determining when we have an outbreak of disease in a community here in the U.S.,” Dr. Venkayya said. “We need to have uniform biosurveillance capability to prepare not only for a pandemic, but any outbreak of infectious disease.”
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