White House: No flu shots for Gitmo detainees

updated 4:11 p.m. ET Nov. 3, 2009

WASHINGTON - The White House says detainees at Guantanamo Bay are not receiving vaccinations against the swine flu.

Robert Gibbs on Tuesday said concern that terrorism suspects at the U.S. naval base in Cuba were receiving vaccines was misplaced.

Gibbs says no vaccines are at the naval base and none are on the way. A spokesman for the U.S. jail facility a day earlier said guards and then inmates were scheduled for inoculations. Critics were fast to object, saying U.S. civilians were waiting for vaccines while suspected terrorists were being given injections.

Army Maj. James Crabtree on Monday had said that doses should start arriving this month and medical personnel requested the doses. He said detainees will be vaccinated "entirely on a voluntary basis."

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