(New York Times News Service) - The Bush Administration's decision to seek $1 billion to buy 10 million more doses of anthrax drugs represents the latest measure by the government to build stockpiles for use in the event of a bioterrorism attack.

Tommy Thompson, secretary of Health and Human Services, said on news programs Sunday that the government wants to stockpile enough antibiotics to treat 12 million people for 60 days, up from 2 million now.

The government has already pushed up its order for 40 million doses of a new smallpox vaccine by two years. And it is racing to try to resume production of an anthrax vaccine for soldiers that has been halted because the manufacturer failed inspections by the Food and Drug Administration.

Sen. Bill Frist, R-Tenn., said Sunday that the public health system has enough drugs and capacity to handle isolated incidents like the recent reports of anthrax infections in Florida and New York, but not for a large-scale or widespread bioterrorism attack.

"If that occurred all over the country or if an airplane flew over and exposed hundreds of thousands of people, you couldn't handle it in our public health infrastructure," Frist, said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday. A physician who is the ranking Republican on the Senate public health subcommittee, Frist said he didn't know if enough drugs would be available if such an incident happened several places at once.

But later on the same program, Frist said that the drug supply was adequate for the time being. "Today, anywhere in the country, we can get 10 million doses of smallpox vaccine, which is plenty sufficient, I believe, for right now," he said. "Within a year, we'll be able to get 40 million doses. Now, we may need to go higher than that, but our government is working very, very quickly," he said. "Same thing with anthrax today," he added, pointing to the 2 million doses of antibiotics already on hand.

Bayer, the German drug and chemical company, has already announced that it will reopen a closed factory in Germany next month in order to increase by 25 percent its production of Cipro, the only antibiotic specifically approved by the FDA to treat inhaled anthrax, the most deadly kind.

When asked on Sunday about Thompson's plan for new purchases, Robert Kloppenburg, director of communications for Bayer's American subsidiary, said, "From my understanding of the discussions, we could meet an order like that."

Bayer sells about $1.5 billion of Cipro a year worldwide, so if all $1 billion of the government's spending were to go for Cipro, it would strain the company's capacity. However, health authorities have said that penicillin and other antibiotics can also be used against anthrax, and it seems likely that some of the money will go for those drugs.

There is no treatment for smallpox, so protection would have to come from vaccines. The government now has 15.4 million doses of vaccine, Thompson said Sunday. The government ordered 40 million doses of a new vaccine from Acambis, a British company, with deliveries to begin in 2004. But it recently pushed up the date to 2002. The government is also considering whether to increase the size of the order.

Vaccination of large numbers of people for anthrax is not considered probable because the infection can be treated and because the vaccine is both in short supply and requires six injections over 18 months.

The BioPort Corp. of Lansing, Mich., is making the vaccine for the Department of Defense, which wants to vaccinate all soldiers. But BioPort has not been able to supply newly made vaccine because it has failed FDA safety inspections. On Friday, the company finished submitting documents to FDA needed for a new inspection, Kim Brennen Root, spokeswoman for the company, said.

Even if the company gets its FDA approval, which could come in weeks or months, the first vaccines produced would be committed to military use.

Copyright 2001 The New York Times News Service. All rights reserved.