Web site tracks vaccine supply
By Rita Rubin and Anita Manning, USA TODAY
State health departments, which are scrambling to ensure that their highest-risk residents get flu shots, can now log on to a secure, private government Web site to see how much vaccine has been shipped to their states and where it has gone.
Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday that Aventis Pasteur — the only U.S. supplier of flu shots this year after vaccine maker Chiron's supply was scrapped because of contamination — has been "extremely cooperative" in giving state health officials information that normally would be proprietary.
Public health officials are "looking very hard at how we can take the remaining stock of Aventis and MedImmune (maker of FluMist, a nasal spray flu vaccine) and distribute it equitably," Gerberding told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an expert panel meeting in Atlanta that advises federal health officials on vaccine policy.
In other developments related to the vaccine shortage:
• The CDC is seeking advice from ethicists on how best to prioritize within high-risk groups in times of vaccine shortages.
• The Food and Drug Administration is negotiating with German, Swiss and Canadian companies to provide "a few million" flu shots, but they wouldn't be available until December or January.
Meanwhile, state health departments are trying to do the most good possible with the Aventis flu shots. Massachusetts issued new guidelines Wednesday that prioritize the high-risk groups. The state is asking healthy people 65 to 74 and diabetics who aren't on insulin to put off getting a flu shot for now.
According to the CDC, both groups are at a high risk of developing flu complications. But, after consulting the CDC's new Web site, Massachusetts has learned it is getting only 1 million doses from Aventis — half of what it needs to immunize every high-risk resident, says Nicole St. Peter, spokeswoman for the state's Department of Public Health.
As in Massachusetts, the CDC's new Web site has provided the Kansas Department of Health and Environment with a more complete picture of vaccine supplies than it could get on its own, says spokeswoman Sharon Watson. Kansas officials were pleasantly surprised to see the totals on the CDC's Web site, she says, declining to reveal the actual numbers because they are proprietary.
Greg Reed, manager of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene's immunization program, says the CDC's Web site doesn't name individual physicians. Instead, Reed says, its county-by-county breakdown groups doctors by specialty, such as pediatrics or family practice.
In addition, Reed says, "the Web site lists the names and addresses of hospitals, clinics, nursing homes" along with how many doses they have received.
For now, he says, the state is relying on "education, cooperation and goodwill" to make sure only high-risk patients get flu shots.