State plans to ship flu-treatment drugs on trucks with booze

Tequila and Tamiflu should be coming to a location near you on the same delivery truck in the next few weeks.

That's the plan state health department officials have arranged with the Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to quickly transport current stockpiles of Tamiflu and Relenza for treating H1N1 flu to local health departments statewide.

DABC spokeswoman Sharon Mackay confirmed Wednesday that the antiviral drugs will be on the same trucks that transport hard liquor throughout the state.

"We're not warehousing it. (The Department of Health) is coordinating transportation through us. Since we already distribute liquor throughout the state, we have the trucks and staff to transport it," she said.

"We're kind of on-call when they are ready to distribute it to the various (local) health departments statewide."

Tamiflu and Relenza help shorten the length of the flu and curb its severity if they are taken within several days of the onset of symptoms. Pharmacies in many parts of the nation, including Utah, ran low on the drugs last spring when word about the H1N1 virus began making headlines.

Utah and several other states received shipments of both drugs from the national stockpile, and Utah's supply is still being held in reserve.

State health department spokesman Tom Hudachko said if local health departments fall "below 50 percent of their own supply" for the antiviral drugs, "that's when they'll notify us" and the shipments will begin. "At this point we haven't had any of that," he said, though the number of cases of H1N1 in Utah is trending up again.

Both the Utah Department of Public Safety and the National Guard have been notified about the arrangement, and "if we get to the point where we're shipping out of the national stockpile" supply that was sent to Utah last spring, "they're willing to provide security, and we're happy to have it.

"So long as we're shipping supplies out of that stockpile, we have the ability to use their resources."

Hudachko said the state won't be using the same arrangement to transport the H1N1 vaccine once it becomes available, because there are strict temperature control requirements for vaccines that don't apply to the antiviral drugs.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta will ship the H1N1 vaccine to a distribution group called McKesson, which has temperature-controlled distribution points nationwide, he said.

McKesson will then ship the vaccine directly to the distribution points, including doctors' offices and local health departments, Hudachko said.

As for the distribution of Tamiflu and Relenza, the drugs are expected to be increasingly in demand as the number of both H1N1 and seasonal flu cases grows this fall.

The DABC operates 41 liquor stores and about 100 additional "package agencies" around the state that are under contract with the state to sell liquor, so utilizing its broad transportation network for the antiviral drugs makes sense, Mackay said.