Health departments across Illinois and the Upper Midwest are flush with flu vaccine despite fears just weeks ago that shortages would leave many seniors, young children and the critically ill unable to get vaccinated.
Instead, a rationing program put in place by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to have preserved enough vaccine to ensure that those considered high-risk for serious repercussions from the flu can get the vaccine if they want.
“I don’t think we’re going to have long lines anymore,” said Jay Terry, director of health and human services in Evanston.
The development is due to an odd combination of circumstances, including neighborly goodwill, an inaccurate belief by many that it’s too late to get a flu shot, and apparently good organization by federal, state and local officials.
Now county health departments in Illinois are faced with a situation that seemed implausible just a few weeks ago after contamination problems led to the closure of a plant that was to have been one of two major suppliers of flu vaccine to the U.S. this year. Instead of the feared vaccine shortages, health officials are facing surpluses, at least for now.
On Friday, a small group of senior citizens and mothers with their babies gathered at the Covenant Community Church in Downstate Canton near Peoria. The Fulton County Health Department had 500 flu shots available, but as the day neared an end, the department had doled out fewer than 300.
“We were thinking of going to the Wal-Mart to get more people to come over,” said Mary England, the county’s Health Department administrator. “If people are feeling fine–even if they are at high risk and should be getting a shot–they’re not doing it.”
New doses arrive
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Chicago and the suburbs share a similar tale. The city Health Department announced this week it had obtained 100,000 new doses of vaccine, while Cook County got another 10,000, which county health officials said was plenty to cover suburban Cook residents who are at high risk for getting flu and who want shots.
Other Midwestern states also are seeing demand for flu shots drop, causing some health officials to say they have leftover vaccine and to rethink the CDC-recommended restrictions that the shots be given only to a select group of citizens that includes seniors over 65, infants, pregnant women and the critically ill.
Indeed, Minnesota just decided to expand its eligibility list to include adults 50 and older, as well as those who live or care for people with chronic medical conditions. Michigan and Wisconsin are considering similar moves, but Illinois health officials say they will continue to follow the CDC recommendations.
The whole situation is quite different from the one faced weeks ago when–with publicity of a shortage running high–seniors and others considered at-risk lined up outside health clinics across the nation and waited hours for shots to be distributed.
At the time, CDC officials assured members of those at-risk categories that there would be enough vaccine to go around for them. But the shortage meant millions of other healthy men and women who usually get flu shots were, this year, going to have to go without.
The supply problems surfaced shortly before the presidential election and quickly became fodder for political debate. Gov. Rod Blagojevich launched an initiative to import flu vaccine from Europe as an adjunct of his political push to force the Bush administration to allow the importation of cheaper pharmaceutical drugs.
Blagojevich is still awaiting federal approval for the vaccine imports, but some local health officials in Illinois said Friday that they might not need them even if the governor is ultimately successful.
Public health officials across the state say the current surplus in vaccine stocks is a result of both widespread publicity about the earlier supply crunch as well as the CDC initiative to limit inoculations to those who need them most.
Many residents, even those who fall in the at-risk categories but aren’t seriously ill, have declined shots this year out of a kind of chivalry, figuring others could benefit from them more, England and other county health officials said. Others have figured, incorrectly, that if they haven’t gotten a vaccination by now they don’t need to.
It’s not too late
“People who are at-risk still need to receive their shot,” said Dr. Robert Weinstein, Cook County’s director of infectious diseases. “Flu season continues through March or April.”
Flu shots are normally dispensed from early October through November, but that was pushed back for many people this year because of the supply problems. Last month, the CDC announced it would distribute 11.6 million flu shot doses to health departments across the nation, including 350,000 to Illinois, said Tom Schafer, spokesman for the state Department of Public Health.
CDC estimates show that in Illinois, about 4.2 million residents fall within the at-risk categories, Schafer said. But CDC data also suggests that, two years ago, only a little more than four in 10 at-risk Illinois residents–about 1.8 million in all–may have gotten flu shots.
By the end of the flu season, he said, the state will likely have obtained about 2 million doses of flu vaccine, on the surface enough by historical standards for all the at-risk residents likely to want a shot. But Schafer warned that calculation could be misleading because it is not known how many of those 2 million shots were administered to people outside the at-risk category before the supply crunch hit.
“We’re glad some counties have enough, but we’re not prepared yet to say the state has enough vaccines,” he said.
But Terry, the director of health and human services in Evanston, said because the restrictions have worked so well, “some [inoculations] could go unused.”
“The big unmet need at this point in terms of demand are those people 40 to 65 who are used to getting flu shots and are not considered a priority in the guidelines,” he said.Because so many adults who typically get flu shots are going without them this season, and because flu is so contagious, some health officials warned that it is not unreasonable to expect a big flu outbreak later in the winter.
Blagojevich spokeswoman Abby Ottenhoff said that is a principal reason why the state should be allowed to go ahead with its overseas vaccine purchases.
“The flu is a very tricky thing to predict,” Cook County’s Weinstein said. “If there’s a big wave in January, then you’d wish you’d have as many inoculations as possible.”
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Where to get shots
If you are a senior citizen, suffer from a serious illness or have young children in need of a flu shot, here are numbers of local public health agencies to call to find out about availability:
Chicago: 312-747-9884
Suburban Cook County: 708-492-2000
Lake: 847-377-8000
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McHenry: 815-334-4510
Kane: 630-208-3801
DuPage: 630-588-3910
Will: 815-727-8480