Tue, November 03, 2009
WASHINGTON, Nov. 3 (Xinhua) -- Terrorist suspects who are held in the U.S. Guantanamo prison will not receive swine flu shots, said the White House on Tuesday.
Presidential spokesman Robert Gibbs told a press briefing that reports saying Guantanamo prisoners were taking vaccinations against H1N1 flu were misplaced.
No Vaccines are either at the U.S. naval base nor on the way there, he noted.
The clarification came after a senior U.S. military official for the jail facility said last weekend that swine flu shots would be provided to Guantanamo guards and then inmates, which triggered strong critics, citing serious shortage of vaccines for American civilians.
President Barack Obama declared late last month a national emergency as swine flu took its second wave this year, and urged medicine producers to speed up production of the swine flu vaccines for millions of Americans.
