Swine flu vaccine arriving days early
The state’s first 36,800 doses of swine flu vaccine have begun arriving at hospitals, clinics, and physicians’ offices, a few days earlier than expected, according to state public health officials.
The initial doses are nasal spray instead of shots, the more common delivery route. For this reason, they will be used mostly to inoculate health care workers and healthy young children, said Jennifer Manley, spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
Unlike the shot, the spray contains bits of live, weakened virus, and cannot be used to immunize high-risk groups such as pregnant women, patients whose disease-fighting systems are severely compromised, or those with chronic conditions like asthma.
The spray cannot be used on hospital employees who work with transplant patients.
Public health officials have advised providers not to plan flu clinics for the general public until more shipments arrive. The state expects weekly shipments throughout the year, and anticipates 1.1 million doses by early November and 700,000 more by early December.
Still, that is not even half of the 4 million vaccine shots and nasal sprays designated for Massachusetts by the federal government, which is buying all of the nation’s vaccine supply.
Before the shots are made available to the general population, providers will target those at high risk for serious illness: pregnant women; children between 6 months and 4 years; people who have regular contact with young infants; and youngsters between ages 5 and 19 diagnosed with chronic conditions such as asthma, heart disease, and diabetes.
Those groups are estimated to total 840,000 people. After they are inoculated through their physicians’ offices, vaccine will begin to be more broadly distributed.
Providers, which began getting the vaccine on Monday, were devising plans yesterday to distribute the doses.
A Caritas Christi Health Care System spokeswoman said the hospital network plans to vaccinate health care workers who have direct contact with patients and will then send doses out to primary care doctors to begin inoculating children.
