How many first responders and health care workers will be vaccinated?
We have asked states to identify workers who might serve on smallpox response teams to vaccinate others and provide critical services in the days following an attack. We are working with states to determine the exact number of individuals who will fall in these categories. To protect the American people, the important thing is to ensure that we have health care workers and first responders ready to serve as smallpox response teams. However, we expect that some of the people identified by the states will not be eligible for vaccination because of a medical condition, and others may choose not to be vaccinated. It has been reported that we will be vaccinating up to 10 million health care workers and first responders. However, we do not expect that the numbers of first responders and health care workers vaccinated in this part of the program to be that high.
