CDC preparing for possible smallpox threat

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The federal government is working to amass enough smallpox vaccine to protect everyone in the country and already has inoculated some of its workers, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday.

"Our intention at this time, and that of the Department of Health and Human Services, is to have enough vaccine available so that anybody who needs it will get it," CDC Director Dr. Jeffrey Koplan told CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."

The United States has a 25-year-old stockpile of 15 million doses against smallpox, which was declared eradicated globally in 1977. The United States routinely vaccinated against the disease until 1972.

Now, the CDC is training medical personnel to recognize and handle an outbreak of the disease, fearing terrorists may have socked away stores of the virus with plans to unleash the disease.

The threat of a smallpox bioterrorist attack is real, Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NAIAD), told a Senate panel last week.

Fauci also noted what he termed "perhaps the most frightening" fact: Unlike anthrax, smallpox is contagious, with a 30 percent mortality rate. Because its symptoms may not appear for 12 days, a smallpox outbreak could spread widely before officials even knew about it, he said.

To address the shortage of smallpox vaccine, NIAID has begun a study of 684 volunteers to see if the remaining vaccine stocks could be diluted up to 10 times and remain effective so that they could be given to more people, Fauci said.