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washingtonpost.com
Flu Shots for Federal
Workers, Military Diverted
By Shankar Vedantam The federal government has diverted 300,000 doses of the flu vaccine
originally meant for federal employees and the military to high-risk civilian
groups, such as people older than 65 and those with chronic conditions,
officials said yesterday. Injectable vaccine intended for 200,000 military personnel will be replaced
with the nasal spray vaccine FluMist, which offers similar protection but is
recommended only for healthy people between the ages of 5 and 49, officials
said. The government has also located 5 million vaccine doses at Canadian and
German plants. Officials will decide whether to import them after regulators
from the Food and Drug Administration inspect the plants and determine whether
the vaccines are safe and effective. No decision is expected until December.
Nearly half of this winter's expected allotment of 100 million doses of
injectable flu vaccine was lost after the discovery of bacterial contamination
at a British manufacturing plant, triggering long lines at clinics and fears
that many high-risk people would not be able to get a flu shot. The debacle has
become an issue in the presidential campaign, and the Bush administration has
scrambled to minimize the fallout. Yesterday's announcement came at a news briefing by Health and Human Services
Secretary Tommy G. Thompson; the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, Mark B. McClellan; the acting commissioner of the FDA, Lester
M. Crawford; and the director of the National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases, Anthony S. Fauci. The director of the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention, Julie L. Gerberding, spoke from Atlanta. "On behalf of the president, I want to extend the administration's
appreciation to citizens across America who, in accordance with CDC guidelines,
are forgoing the flu shot so that someone in a priority category can get one,"
Thompson said. The foreign sources of additional vaccine supplies are a GlaxoSmithKline
facility in Germany and an ID Biomedical plant in Canada. The Bush administration has staunchly opposed the importation of cheaper
prescription drugs from Canada and other countries, but Thompson said the flu
vaccine situation is entirely different. According to federal law, he said, the
government can import medications once they are determined to be safe and
effective. That determination has not been made for reimported drugs, but it
could happen with the flu vaccine from the foreign plants, he said. People who
get a flu shot made by these plants would probably have to sign an
informed-consent form, he added. Fauci urged seniors who have not recently gotten a pneumococcal vaccine
against pneumonia to get one. Fauci said doctors have stocks of pneumococcal
vaccine. Additionally, Merck & Co. will triple the production of the vaccine
this year, to about 18 million doses, officials said. Pneumonia is one of the
most serious complications of the flu. Abby Ottenhoff, a spokeswoman for Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D),
complained that the Bush administration is moving too slowly in seeking vaccine
supplies from foreign sources. Earlier this week, Blagojevich asked the FDA for
clearance to buy flu vaccine from Europe. Federal officials said they have
scheduled a meeting for today on that proposal. "This is a public health emergency, and there are hundreds of thousands of
individuals who are elderly or very young children with weak immune systems who
are very much at risk of severe sickness or death," Ottenhoff said. "We don't
have time to spare."
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