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Metropolis Reality Forums Ť Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine ť

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   Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine

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Topic: Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine (Read 146 times)

lakelady
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Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine
« on: Oct 7^th, 2004, 7:34am »

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Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine
Aventis promises a million more doses amid dire shortage
Updated: 6:36 a.m. ET Oct. 7, 2004WASHINGTON - One flu shot maker will squeeze out an additional million doses this year, but it is unlikely that any more can be made, federal health officials said Wednesday.

A day after the nations flu vaccine supply was cut in half, officials scrambled to determine which cities and states will have the most dire shortages.

Despite early, scattered reports of price gouging, the government is appealing to peoples sense of good citizenship to ensure the fair distribution of scarce supplies of flu vaccine this year.

Most vaccinations are done at health departments, private doctors offices, malls, grocery stores or work places.

Communities have begun canceling long-planned flu-shot clinics. Hospitals suddenly stripped of planned supplies began searching for luckier neighbors that might share.

Aventis Pasteur this year will produce 55.4 million flu shots, 1 million more than originally estimated, Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said Wednesday.

But Aventis said it is unlikely that it can produce any more than that before February or March, when flu season usually is waning.

Aventis has shipped 30 million of its doses and sold all but about 2 million.

Most of the doses are in the hands of private distributors, not state health departments. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has began trying to track down exactly where those doses are, in an effort to help direct vaccine to the youngest, oldest and sickest people those who need it the most.

The CDC could not even estimate on Wednesday which regions would have the greatest shortages. The search probably will take weeks and will be voluntary.

The CDC cannot override private contracts that, for instance, allow for healthy office workers to get the shot instead of people in nursing homes. The agency hopes to soon open a hot line for patients and doctors to use to help find scarce supplies.

People do need to be patient, CDC Director Julie Gerberding said.

Told of scattered reports of healthy adults lining up for shots, Gerberding said health officials will urge mass-vaccinators to comply with the voluntary rationing.

The United States had expected a record 100 million doses of flu vaccine. But on Tuesday, British regulators unexpectedly shut down a second supplier, Chiron Corp. That held up the 46 million doses, destined for the United States, at the factory in England where the vaccine had been made. Manufacturing problems apparently led to the contamination of a portion of those doses.

U.S. health officials were stunned. The Food and Drug Administrations monitoring had suggested that most of Chirons vaccine would be fine.

FDA scientists are going for Britain to discuss where the disputes are and how we might be able to reconcile them, Thompson said.

He was not optimistic that any of the shots ultimately would be usable. It does not look promising, Thompson said.

The extra Aventis vaccine is the result of the companys production line proving more efficient than anticipated, Gerberding said.

Its very doubtful that manufacturers will be able to make any more, Thompson said.

This catastrophe is going to be the impetus for Congress and manufacturers to start transforming the development of vaccine, he said.

Redistribution scramble
Flu vaccine now takes months to brew, using chicken eggs, an old-fashioned method that the government hopes to modernize.

The CDC is optimistic it will find more vaccine because doctors and hospitals placed orders anticipating they would give shots to many more people this year than the roughly 50 million classified as high-risk. Those providers, Gerberding predicted, will do the right thing and not hoard doses.

Hospitals scrambled to find alternatives.

New York bought most of the areas flu shots from Chiron, said Dr. Pascal James Imperato, a former New York City health commissioner who is now at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.

I dont think theres ever been the kind of redistribution in the past that may now be required, he said.

Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas has received half of its planned Aventis shipment, infectious disease chief Dr. William Stuker said.

Were in limbo until Aventis decides what to do were hoping that perhaps information will be coming down from the CDC or the National Institutes of Health or Aventis itself as to what strategy were going to take, Stuker said.

In suburban Washington, the Inova Health System that gave over 70,000 flu shots in Northern Virginia last year canceled dozens of flu clinics planned to start this weekend, until it can assess how many doses it ultimately will receive.

High-risk patients depend on flu shots because the injections are made of killed influenza virus.

Other people have a different option: About 1 million doses of an inhaled flu vaccine, MedImmune Inc.s FluMist, will be available for healthy 5- to 49-year-olds. This vaccine is made from live but weakened influenza virus.

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Rhune
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Re: Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine
« Reply #1 on: Oct 7^th, 2004, 10:53am »

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This is just disgusting. I can't explain how angry I am that they have sold the bulk of the flu shots to private contracts instead of state health departments so that the people who need the shots the most will likely not be getting them. Angry

I'm all for capitalism, but this is just wrong. My son with immunity issues will likely not be able to get a shot this year now, so that some company with healthy workers can provide shots to their people so they won't get sick and miss work. This is just another bloody example of why health care keeps coming to a head in politics.

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lakelady
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Re: Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine
« Reply #2 on: Oct 7^th, 2004, 10:56am »

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Love your new avatar Rhune.
As for flu shots, our company has a health fair every year in October and offers free ones. I had decided to have one for the very first time. Unfortunately we got a memo this morning saying it had been cancelled. Sad

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Rhune
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Re: Officials scramble to find more flu vaccine
« Reply #3 on: Oct 7^th, 2004, 11:17am »

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http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5253a4.htm

Since October 2003, a total of 93 influenza-associated deaths among children aged <18 years have been reported to CDC. All patients had evidence of influenza virus infection detected by rapid antigen testing or other laboratory tests.

The date of death was reported for 92 of the 93 cases (Figure). The median age of the 93 children was 4 years (range: 4 weeks--17 years), with 55 (59%) children aged <5 years and 24 (26%) aged 6--23 months (Table 1). Among the 92 children whose sex was reported, 41 (45%) were male. A total of 35 (38%) of the 93 children were reported to have had underlying chronic medical conditions (Table 2), and 41 (44%) were reported to have had no underlying conditions; the medical history was unknown for 17 (18%) children. Of the 55 children for whom the location of death was reported, 15 (27%) died at home, 12 (22%) died in emergency departments, 25 (45%) died as inpatients, and three (5%) died in transport to hospitals.

Pneumonia was a reported complication in 25 of the 93 children. Invasive bacterial co-infections were reported in 15 children, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus pneumoniae, Streptococcus pyogenes, Enterococcus sp., Haemophilus influenzae (type b and non-typable), Neisseria meningitidis, Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Klebsiella pneumoniae, and Serratia marcescens.

Of the 45 children whose influenza vaccination status was reported, one child had evidence of adequate vaccination, whereas 33 (73%) were not vaccinated, and six children were partially vaccinated (i.e., they had received 1 of 2 doses); five children were reported as vaccinated, but the interval between vaccination and onset of illness was not documented.

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