PITTSBURGH City, county stressed by flu-vaccine shortage

Some departments have extended their vaccination clinics by weeks.
PITTSBURGH (AP) -- The flu season has come on hard and started early in Pennsylvania this year, stressing some county and city health departments' vaccination supplies.
The Pennsylvania Health Department and many local health agencies received reports of flu cases weeks earlier than past years, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has classified the flu in the state as widespread, the CDC's most severe ranking.
This, combined with reports of thousands becoming ill with the virus in western states, has led to a spike in the number of people receiving or inquiring about flu vaccinations, health departments in the state reported. Some departments have extended their vaccination clinics by weeks and ordered more of the vaccine.
"We've just been inundated with requests [for vaccinations]," Patty McNulty, the director of nursing for the Wilkes-Barre Department of Health, said Friday. "We've given out 1,800 so far this year. We typically give out around 1,000. I have 10 doses left, and I need to save them for kids who need a second dose, so I've been turning people away."
The two makers of flu shots in the United States, Chiron and Aventis Pasteur, said Friday they have run out of vaccine and will not be able to meet a surge in demand.
Limited supply
Most city and county health departments hold their clinics in October and November, so people would have had a difficult time getting vaccinations through the government regardless of the national supply, said state health department Spokesman Richard McGarvey.
The state health department vaccinates only needy, high-risk individuals -- the very young, the very old or people with compromised immune systems -- and not the general population, McGarvey said. The state health department, which mainly gets its vaccinations from the CDC, has a limited supply to fulfill that mission, he said.
The Allentown Health Bureau, which has given 2,500 vaccinations this year -- 500 more than last year -- has extended its vaccination clinic by a month through December, said Barbara Stader, the director of health. But she's not sure how she's going to stretch her remaining 150 doses.
"We've been giving it out here for 20 years and 126 people came in the beginning, and now we have thousands and we're just a little city," Stader said. "This is a good development because we're talking about an illness that kills thousands every year. The flu kills far more people than SARS does."
Slight increase
As of Friday afternoon, the Philadelphia Department of Public Health had enough supplies to offer vaccinations at its eight city-run health centers, said Jim Sweeney, of the city's immunization program.
The city health centers have given out 13,800 vaccinations, a slight increase over last year, a spokesman for the department of public health said.
The Allegheny County Health Department has received reports of some physicians running out of vaccine, but the county's supply is strong, spokesman Guillermo Cole said.
The state health department doesn't actively collect numbers on flu cases but received its first report of a flu case on Nov. 3, about two weeks earlier than normal, said department spokeswoman Jessica Seiders.
As of Friday, the Philadelphia health department had learned of 27 cases this season, while the Allegheny County Health Department had learned of 34 confirmed cases.
Health departments statewide that were contacted by The Associated Press said most of their reported cases were Type A influenza. But no one had learned yet if any of their cases were caused by the A-Fujian-H3N2 strain, part of a class of flu viruses that caused severe outbreaks in the United States in the 1990s.
"I estimate that every confirmed case represents several hundred or even a thousand other cases," Cole said. "We've never had this many cases this early."