OLYMPIA – Washington has asked the federal government to reserve the state’s full allotment of federally subsidized anti-viral medicine, to be used in case of a flu pandemic, state officials said Wednesday.
The Bush administration has plans to buy enough medication to treat 44 million people nationwide, or about 15 percent of each state’s population.
States can buy more to bring their stockpiles up to 25 percent of their populations under a federal program. The federal government would pay a quarter of the cost for the extra medicine.
Washington state’s federal allotment is 913,000 courses, and the state was given the option of buying 643,744 more, which would treat about 1.6 million of the state’s 6.4 million people.
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