Doctors hit with flu vaccine delays, distribution hiccups

Large numbers of doses might be delivered before the season's end, but physicians say they'll believe it when they see it.

By Victoria Stagg Elliott, AMNews staff. Nov. 7, 2005.

After last season's flu vaccine debacle, internist Yuan-Po Tu, MD, hedged his bets.

Last time, nearly all of the more than 20,000 doses of vaccine he ordered for Washington state's Everett Clinic, where he is a staff physician, were supposed to come from Chiron Corp. Ultimately, though, his multispecialty clinic received only about 1,000 shots as part of a reallocation of available supplies in December 2004.

This year he ordered from wherever he could. As of mid-October, he had gotten nearly 8,000 doses from Sanofi Pasteur and GlaxoSmithKline. The thousands of doses he ordered from Chiron have been promised, although it is unclear when they will arrive.

"We're sitting on pins and needles waiting for Chiron to release," Dr. Tu said. "And I won't believe they're providing flu vaccine until I see the whites of the vials in my office."

Despite predictions that this year's flu vaccine supplies would be plentiful, physicians and public health officials are realizing that such forecasts are not so straightforward. Eventually the supply might be ample, but it hasn't been yet.

"It seems we have another year where influenza vaccine is a challenge," said Raymond Strikas, MD, associate director for adult immunization at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, during an October conference call to update physicians.

Few physicians have all they ordered. Many have some. Others have none at all.

"People need to remember who they ordered vaccine from," Dr. Strikas said. "If you ordered from Chiron or a company that uses Chiron vaccine, you won't have received vaccine yet, unfortunately."