Newly Shipped Vaccine to Let Flu Shots Resume

With a fresh infusion of vaccine on the way, Orange County health officials said Tuesday they hope to resume flu shot clinics for those in need by as early as this weekend.

The California Health Services Department informed the county that it should get about 20,000 of the 130,000 doses the state has received in the latest round of shipments from its drug distributor.

Forced to cancel 100 small clinics this month because of widely reported national delivery problems, the county is trying to come up with a broader, faster system to vaccinate those who still need shots.

Specifically, the county is trying to arrange large-scale clinics at sites that can accommodate bigger crowds than the senior centers, churches and shelters that typically hold such clinics, according to Mary Wright, a county immunization coordinator.

Officials in other counties, however, expressed doubt that they will be able to get the vaccine to all those who need it before the flu season arrives in December.

“We keep hearing we’re going to get it, and we’re not getting it,” said Dr. Susan Fernyak, director of communicable disease prevention for the San Francisco County Health Department. “I don’t know if we’re going to get it in time.”

The California Department of Health Services, which distributes roughly 10% of the vaccine administered in the state, ordered 700,000 doses this year. With the latest shipments, it has now received 420,000 doses.

Dr. Natalie Smith, immunization branch chief for the state health department, said the new batches will be shipped to counties “as soon as we turn it around in our office.”

“We’re just sort of doing it so each county has a fairly similar amount,” she said. “Hopefully, we can get them the rest of their orders within the next couple of weeks.”

The vaccine delays were caused largely by manufacturing problems. Some leading makers of the vaccine reported trouble growing a common strain of the virus and others got late starts because of quality control issues.

The shortage has led to a panic of sorts in some communities. Thousands of mostly senior citizens sought flu shots Saturday at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, causing gridlock on nearby streets and freeways.

On Tuesday, Hoag announced it was canceling four flu shot clinics scheduled Friday through Sunday at its satellite clinics in Orange County because of the vaccine shortage.

But with new state-issue vaccines on the way, health officials in some regions were contemplating new plans to distribute the vaccine to the elderly, poor, homeless and other high-risk individuals.

Los Angeles County, which had to cancel about 30 of its 165 outreach clinics, does not know how it will divvy up its new ration until it knows for sure how much it is getting and when it will arrive, said John Schunhoff, chief of operations for public health for the county.

“The most important thing will be getting it to those in highest risk groups,” he said.

In a related development, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved a motion by supervisor Don Knabe seeking a federal investigation into the delivery problems and a task force of private and public representatives to develop a master distribution plan.

Rep. Gary A. Condit, D-Ceres, announced last week that he is calling for hearings on the vaccine snafus.

Officials for General Injectibles and Vaccines, the Virginia-based distributor that the state uses for its vaccine, said there is no hard and fast system for determining who gets the deliveries first. The company has public customers, such as the state, as well as thousands of private customers such as doctors’ offices.