County officials unsure when next shipment of flu vaccine will arrive

Stephen Curran

Friday, Oct. 29, 2004 | 11 a.m.

A 2,000-dose shipment of the flu vaccine that was supposed to arrive at the Clark County Health District early this week has not yet reached the state's warehouse, the agency's nurse manager told the district board Thursday morning.

Meanwhile the state Health Division, which will distribute the vaccine to Nevada's 17 counties when it arrives from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters, does not know when Clark County's shipment will arrive or how much of it the Las Vegas Valley will see, Martha Framsted, a spokeswoman for the state agency, said.

So far neither the state nor the county has received the shipments.

"It's not a nice picture, but that's the state we're in," Bonnie Sorenson, the district's public health nurse manager, said. "People are getting very, very upset about this."

The county health district has already distributed 2,500 doses of the vaccine to health providers specializing in the treatment of high-risk groups such as the elderly, children and organ transplant patients, Sorenson said.

The earliest Clark County could expect its share of the vaccine is next week, Framsted said.

"We're still waiting to hear how much we're going to be getting," Framsted said. "But we're still awaiting the shipment. We were thinking sometime next week, but even then we're not sure."

The state's vaccine supply is expected to come from Aventis, a French pharmaceutical maker, and will likely also be distributed to providers who specialize in high-risk segments of the population, Jennifer Sizemore, a spokeswoman for the health district, said. The general public will still not receive the shots.

The health district had ordered 35,000 doses from Chiron, the company shut down by British regulators after some of its doses were contaminated. The shutdown is being blamed for a nationwide shortage of the vaccine.

Sizemore said the health district is confident that the newly ordered the shots will arrive, although the agency does not know when that might happen.

"I think we'll get them, it's just a question of when," she said.

No influenza cases have been reported in Clark County, although interest has piqued this year in light of the shortage, Dr. Donald Kwalick, the county's chief medical officer, said at the meeting.

Two cases of the flu were reported in Washoe County on Wednesday, according to the Washoe County Health Department.

About 36,000 people nationwide died from the flu last year, according to the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Under ordinary circumstances, the health district administers about 100,000 flu shots, roughly one-fourth of the high-risk population, Kwalick said.

Valley resident David Davoss, a 71-year-old retired communications specialist, said Monday that he had been calling everyone from the health district to the governor's office to the CDC asking when the next batch of flu shots would arrive and exactly how they would be distributed and "couldn't get a straight answer."

"Kwalick and his people at the health district, in particular, don't seem to have a good handle on this," Davoss said. "They have not been focused enough on this problem."

Davoss predicted that "people are going to die unless they get this straightened out in a hurry."