“I’m here to save the day,” library administrative assistant June Vanlinter announced to the staff gathered at the circulation desk at the Meriden Public Library Tuesday morning, as she handed out white lifesavers, red striped mints and green candies in plastic sandwich bags.

“Oh, she doesn’t get saved,” Vanlinter said about one librarian whose name was not on any of the packages.

The mood was light, but as stand-ins for the antibiotics Doxycycline, Amoxicillin, and Ciprofloxacin, what the sweets represented was no laughing matter. They were part of a mock anthrax attack drill that the city ran Tuesday to test its procedures in case of a major public health emergency.

Meriden joined Wallingford, New Haven and other communities in the state health department’s Region 2, which covers much of southern Connecticut, in drills yesterday to see how quickly and how well each municipality could distribute the appropriate antibiotics to its residents and workers in case of an aerosolized anthrax attack. The event ran smoothly, but for a few small hiccups. The city’s last anthrax drill was in 2009.

The drill began at 9 a.m., when Department of Health and Human Services Director Beth Vumbaco set four teams of four health staff volunteers at the department’s headquarters on Miller Street to work packing between 2,800 – 3,000 sandwich bags full of mock antibiotics. The group was operating with the back story that they received a shipment of the pills from the Centers for Disease Control because 100 patients on the previous day had been admitted to regional hospitals with respiratory illnesses, and some had cases of confirmed anthrax.

As teams worked on their bags, other volunteers began calling representatives of  the city’s top “priority groups” – those who deal with public safety like police, fire, public health workers, and dispatchers – to have them come pick up the packages and distribute them to their own staff. Each staff member had filled out a participation form that included medical issues and antibiotic allergies prior to the drill day.

All other city departments were on the list to receive the medication “so that there wouldn’t be any gaps in service,” Vumbaco said.  Employees of private health centers like Rushford and Bradley Home were also scheduled to get the dosages. Each person who received their “medicine” also received enough for family members who were living with them, so that they wouldn’t be exposed at home.  

Members of each group trickled in one-by-one to pick up their boxes of mock medicine.

Molly Savard, Executive Director of the The Bradley Home came to retrieve her package with elder care facility’s Director of Maintenance Fred Miglietta along – for protection.

“In a true medical emergency it could be ugly,” Savard said. “Fred’s stronger than I am.”

In a real emergency, these operations would be moved to Platt High School, Vumbaco said. The designated priority groups would be taken care of first, and then the remaining portion of the 60,000 people who live in Meriden would be served. Vumbaco said media outlets would be used to disseminate the information to the general population, and senior center buses might be used to transport people to Platt.  

Though the drill focused on anthrax, the same plan could be used for other emergencies, according to members of the state health department and CDC, who were at the department observing the drill.

“The model could be used for any event – the scenario could be used for distributing potassium iodide,” said Ann Stuart of the CDC.  Potassium iodide is given to combat radiation poisoning in case of a nuclear emergency.

Though the drill was scheduled to end at noon, the teams finished their packing and calling far before schedule at around 10:15 a.m. and debriefed at 11:30 a.m.

Overall, the drill went smoothly, Vumbaco said, but pointed out snags in the system – like difficulty reaching others by phone because so many people were trying to call and one company who arrived late. The department will work on addressing those issues, she said.

The biggest difficulty the staff had was with the forms each mock antibiotic recipient had to fill out before the event – people neglected to check if they had allergies to antibiotics and if so, which antibiotics they were allergic to.

Having employees fill out their forms fully was the biggest issue Savard said she had at The Bradley Home, and that this drill highlighted for her the importance of it.  

“You can have a plan, but you have to work the plan to know it works,” she said.