• E-mail
• Print
• Comment
• Font Size
• Digg
• del.icio.us
• Discuss article

CDC Flu Plan Protects High-Risk Patients

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 October 2004, 06:00 CDT

WASHINGTON - Many of the nation's scarce remaining flu shots will be shipped directly to pediatricians, nursing homes and other places that care for high-risk patients, under a plan negotiated between the government and maker Aventis Pasteur.

The targeted shipments come as health officials struggle to ensure the people who most need flu shots get them, now that the nation's supply of influenza vaccine has been slashed in half.

Under the plan announced Tuesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Aventis will direct shipments of its remaining 22.4 million doses to health workers who care for patients that the CDC deems at highest risk of death or hospitalization from influenza.

The first of the shipments, about 14.2 million doses, begins immediately but will take six to eight weeks to finish distributing to pediatricians' offices, hospitals, nursing homes and long-term care facilities that thus far haven't received much, if any, vaccine.

Also, the CDC is mapping county-by-county the number of flu vaccine doses shipped and matching that with each county's number of high-risk residents - to direct Aventis' next shipments even more tightly.

The CDC last week urged healthy adults to forego getting flu shots, after British regulators unexpectedly shut down a major U.S. supplier, Chiron Corp., and halted shipment of 46 million to 48 million doses.

That left Aventis as this year's sole supplier of injectible flu vaccine, with a total 55.4 million doses. By last week, it had shipped over half that amount, mostly to private distributors - and the CDC asked doctors, grocery stores and other flu-shot venues to enforce the voluntary rationing and stretch the supply.

The CDC hopes the new plan for allocating the rest of Aventis' supply can better target the shots to the highest-priority patients: babies and toddlers ages 6 months to 23 months; anyone 65 or older; anyone with chronic medical conditions such as heart or lung disease; pregnant women; residents of long-term care facilities; children on chronic aspirin therapy; health workers who care for high-risk patients; and caregivers and household contacts of babies under age 6 months.

Flu shots are made of killed influenza virus. The healthy do have a limited other option: the nasal spray vaccine FluMist, made of live but weakened virus. Maker MedImmune Inc. said last week it would double supplies to 2 million doses. It is to be used only by healthy 5- to 49-year-olds.

More News in this Category