Wait for H1N1 Vaccine Continues to Frustrate Congress
VACCINE
New London Day
Jeanne Amy
Boston University Washington News Service
11/17/09
WASHINGTON—Lawmakers Tuesday pressed federal officials about the impediments to distributing H1N1 vaccine to those most at risk.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee heard from officials that vaccines are slowly catching up with the demand, but lawmakers said that there is still too much confusion surrounding who should be vaccinated.
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., chairman of the committee, called the hearing “on the backdrop of two crucial numbers going the wrong way – more flu deaths than previously realized and fewer vaccine doses than originally promised.”
Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, had told the committee on Oct. 21 that there would be enough vaccine by early November for every American who needed to be vaccinated.
Connecticut was set to receive more than 500,000 doses by mid-October and has only seen a fraction of the targeted amount, according to the office of Gov. M. Jodi Rell. The vaccine was prioritized to go to children ages 2 to 4 and to health care workers and caregivers who work with children younger than 6 months old. The second tier of priority included pregnant women and persons under 18 with high-risk medical conditions.
Officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated that nationwide 120 to 160 million doses could be supplied for the at-risk population. To date, 48.5 million doses are available for the states, according to center officials.
The delays were attributed to there being five companies supplying the vaccine, only one of which is in the United States, and to equipment failures. Employees of the Department of Health and Human Services are monitoring the situation, according to Dr. Nicole Lurie, the department’s assistant secretary for preparedness and response.
“What we heard pretty consistently was the need for flexibility for state and locals, let them decide whether to self-prioritize in a number of ways or go broader,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
While state and city officials were charged with distributing the vaccine from the beginning, Lieberman called for more federal involvement in directing the distribution of the vaccine.
“This is a national problem, and there was a focus on national alerts about this, so the fact that you gave the states some latitude didn’t really sink in nationally,” Lieberman said. “I think this is a case really where it would have been better to have a national answer.”
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