A shot in the dark? Some say flu vaccine hard to find

Posted: Published on January 17th, 2013

This post was added by Dr P. Richardson

Some parts of the country are experiencing spot shortages of flu vaccine because of increased demand in a flu season that started earlier and is more severe than previous years.

In Las Vegas, Celeste Tom tried six times before she found a flu shot for her boyfriend.

"I'd been bugging him to get a flu shot, but he kept putting it off," said Tom, 55. The Smith's Food and Drug Center where she got her shot was out. Her partner called his doctor's office, but they were out, too. Next she tried a Walgreens and then a CVS pharmacy; no vaccine. She called another Smith's, but it would administer vaccine only to people over 65. On Monday, she found a Walgreens that had 10 doses left. "I called back when he got off work at 1 p.m. to make sure they still had some, and he finally went in."

"The bottom line is there's vaccine out there," said Tom Skinner, a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "There may be places where there are spot shortages, but there should be a little bit more coming, so people may have to check around for it."

It took Pam Copley a full day. The Staten Island, N.Y., mom, 42, tried her pediatrician, but the office had no appointments until February. She and daughter Colleen, 15, got in line at a CVS, only to have the nurse come and and say she didn't have shots for anyone under 18. After "a bunch of phone calls," Copley found vaccine at an urgent-care clinic. They had to wait there for five hours, but it was worth it, she said. "There's lots of flu in the schools here right now.

U.S. flu vaccine manufacturers have increased the number of doses they expect to produce this year to 145 million from previous estimates of 137 million, Skinner said. About 128 million doses have been shipped, and the "vast majority" of those have been used, he said. "We had 112 million people vaccinated by the end of November."

The CDC is working with the National Influenza Vaccine Summit, a coalition that monitors the flu and vaccine supply, to tell doctors and other health care providers which distributors and vaccine manufacturers have vaccine available to order, Skinner said.

"Spot shortages are not due to any manufacturing issues," said Rita Chappelle, a spokeswoman for the Food and Drug Administration. It's more an effect of a mild flu season last year and a more severe one this year. "Demand for the vaccine is high."

Ordering flu vaccine can be a challenge, said Cameron Wolfe with the division of infectious diseases at Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. It requires "pharmacies, physicians' offices and clinics to pre-order their supply, and given the variability in the flu season, it is always an educated estimate of what you'll actually need."

There are two main vaccine producers in the United States, Sanofi US in Bridgewater, Conn., and GlaxoSmithKline in Upper Merion, Pa. For the 2012-2013 flu season GlaxoSmithKline, also known as GSK, produced about 25 million doses of flu vaccine.

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A shot in the dark? Some say flu vaccine hard to find

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