Vaccine Shortage for New Flu Virus Possible

It’s been a mild flu season so far this year, but health officials expect an upsurge in flu cases, especially among people under age 35, after schools reopen after the year-end holidays.

They note that February is generally the peak month for influenza. In addition, there is a new strain of flu virus that must be reckoned with, and there may be a shortage of vaccine against that new strain.

So far, flu has occurred in 15 states from coast to coast, including California, but the actual number of people stricken has been relatively small, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control.

Officials Were Concerned

Los Angeles did not have its first confirmed flu case until last week, but officials at the county Department of Health Services say young adults may be especially susceptible to flu this year because they lack immunity to a new strain identified in Taiwan last spring.

At the time, public health officials were concerned because that strain appeared to be a fast-moving variant of the Asian, or Type A, virus that is similar to one that has not been in this country since the early 1950s. And by early November the virus had arrived in the United States.

But now health officials say that the cases that have occurred in the Orient indicate that the Taiwan strain causes flu that is no more severe than those in the past.

Ordinarily the Taiwan strain would have been incorporated into the standard flu vaccine, but that did not happen because the virus was not isolated until after the U.S. pharmaceutical companies had begun production of this year’s vaccine supply.

Different Flu Vaccines

As a result, for the first time, two different flu vaccines are available. And that has created some confusion--among doctors as well as the general public--over who should have which vaccine, if any.

The standard vaccine would protect against the three strains of flu viruses that have been around for several years and that affect all age groups. The supplementary vaccine would protect only against the Taiwan strain, which is striking primarily people under 35.

There may be a shortage of the supplementary vaccine because the Centers for Disease Control initially led pharmaceutical companies to believe that the only people in a high risk group who would need the vaccine are those under 35 who have a chronic illness such as heart or lung disease, according to pharmaceutical company spokesmen.

And so the companies tailored their vaccine production accordingly, said Jack Sholl, a spokesman for Warner-Lambert Co., whose Parke-Davis unit makes flu vaccine.

But when the CDC recommendations were published, they included not only high-risk people under 35 but also people of all ages who may want to have the vaccine as an added precaution. That greatly expanded the number of people who may want the vaccine and may have created a demand that could exceed the supply, according to Sholl and some health officials.

Dr. Karl Kappus, a CDC physician, admitted that “there has been a lot of confusion” about which vaccine is recommended for which high-risk group. He said the confusion arises because of the unusual situation of having two flu vaccines.

Reduce the Spread

The CDC urges high-risk people of all ages to have the standard vaccine and those at high risk under 35 to have the Taiwan vaccine as well.

In addition, it says that vaccinating young adult parents and siblings of high-risk children with the Taiwan vaccine could reduce spread of the illness to those children. Vaccinating young health-care personnel with the Taiwan vaccine who come into contact with high-risk youngsters may also reduce spread of the illness, the CDC said.

Regardless of which type of flu virus causes illness, the symptoms are the same: fever, muscle aches, cough, runny nose and a sore throat, according to Dr. Shirley Fannin of Los Angeles County’s Department of Health Services.

Her prescription: “Eat a light diet, drink lots of fluids and keep the fever down.”