We need everyone in America to be able to have a vaccine that will protect them and their children and their loved ones from having a pandemic flu, and we need to have the capacity to manufacture enough in six months that everyone could have one, |
We need to be moving boldly in redeveloping this (influenza vaccine) industry, |
We need to continue to develop new vaccines. |
We recommend that people call their physicians before they go, and be persistent and patient. It's important. |
We were working on pandemic planning long before Katrina, |
We will use the full array of administrative tools to ensure that the plans live up to the terms of their contract. Further, we would expect that poor performing plans would likely not be participating in upcoming years. |
We're delivering medical supplies, facilities and professionals into the Gulf Region to provide health care to those evacuating from New Orleans as well as victims of the hurricane throughout the region, |
We're not as well-prepared today as we want to be, ... We're better prepared than we were yesterday, and we'll continue to get better prepared every day as time goes forward. |
We're overdue for a pandemic and under-prepared. |
We've identified 2,600 beds in hospitals in the 12-state area. In addition to that, we've identified 40,000 beds nationwide, should they be needed, |
What is the probability that it will occur? No one knows, but signs that have occurred in Turkey and Romania and other countries along the natural flyways are certainly troubling signs, |
What's the probability of (a pandemic) happening again during the next decade? We don't know, but the warning signs are clearly troubling ? so troubling that no nation on Earth can afford to ignore this, |
Whenever you have a new program that affects 25 million people, you're going to have some snags. |
While there may be short term costs to us individually or collectively, the burden of being secretive and lacking transparency would be catastrophic, |
Will critics say, 'We have been crying wolf,' and lose the sense of urgency we feel about this issue? |