The flu and you
With shortages everywhere, authorities are trying to quell panic and reassure the public that the vaccines are coming
Ralph Loschiavo had some real bad luck recently. The 78-year-old retired stonemason was in line at 8:30 a.m. at his local Eckerd's drugstore for a flu clinic. "But they stopped giving shots eight people in front of me." The next day Loschiavo was turned away at a supermarket. Hoping that No. 3 would be the charm, he gamely joined another line--of elderly people in folding chairs and on walkers outside Shoppers Food Warehouse in Crofton, Md., about 8 a.m. By 1 p.m. Loschiavo was close to the front, holding his assigned number, 217, when the nurse from Maxim Health Systems announced that she had administered all the available doses, 215.
Loschiavo shook his head. "I'm 78, I have one lung, and I had a quintuple bypass. I usually get my flu shot at the doctor, but they told me they had no vaccine and I should go to one of the grocery stores. We stand in these lines for what?"
Loschiavo's dilemma was shared by thousands of elderly and chronically ill people across the country who braved hail, rain, and excruciatingly long waits to receive their shots. Federal health officials tried to quell panic and reassure the public last week that more flu vaccine was on the way. Aventis-Pasteur, now the only flu-shot maker licensed to sell vaccine in the United States, agreed to produce 2.6 million more doses of vaccine by January 2005, to supplement the 55 million it had already contracted to provide. Taken together with 3 million doses of FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine approved for those ages 5 through 49, the United States will have nearly 61 million doses of vaccine--about 22 million shy of those administered last year.
The problem started October 4, when British health authorities shut down the Chiron Corp. manufacturing plant because its flu vaccine had become contaminated with bacteria. By that time, more than half of Aventis's vaccine--33 million doses--had been shipped. "How much of that 33 million doses is being administered to treat high-risk groups or had already been administered to high- or low-risk groups? That's an unknown," says Mitchell Cohen, an infectious-disease official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And trying to track those doses down, says William Schaffner, chairman of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt School of Medicine, "is like trying to herd cats."
Priorities. After the Chiron closure, federal health officials set guidelines for distributing the limited supply of flu vaccine that remains, perhaps 25 million doses, to as many as possible of the estimated 98 million Americans who need it most. These include people 65 and older and those with chronic illnesses and compromised immune systems, young children ages 6 to 23 months and their caregivers, pregnant women, nursing home residents, and healthcare workers.
Despite the recommendations, there were reports that some vaccine was being administered to healthy people not listed in the CDC guidelines. Last week members of Congress, Capitol Hill staffers, college students, and others were being vaccinated. At the same time, many hospitals and clinics were without vaccine for their sickest patients. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy Thompson urged Americans to be "patient and persistent," while insisting that "we have a healthy supply of vaccines and medicines to cope with flu season." Yet, as hundreds of U.S. citizens crossed into Canada for flu shots at double the U.S. price, and doctors who treat cancer and AIDS patients planned vaccine-buying trips abroad, it was clear that dire shortages were the norm, not the exception.
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