“It is likely also as we produce more vaccine and as people are given the opportunity to get vaccinated, and as disease maybe wanes in the future, we will have significant amounts of vaccine that can’t be used,” Frieden said.
He elaborated that at present, 22.4 million doses are available for states and they can be obtained a day after the states place an order for them.
As of now, a number of states and cities have been delivered only one-tenth of the total vaccine that they had previously anticipated by this time.
Quantity of vaccines available still debatable
Of late, there have been speculations about the availability of H1N1 vaccine. The members of Congress also enquired whether federal officials had been over optimistic in determining the quantity of vaccine to be available.
Referring to President Barack Obama’s daughters, a White House blog says, “Malia and Sasha were both vaccinated for H1N1 last week, after the vaccine became available to Washington, D.C. schoolchildren.”
Frieden believes that the delays in delivery of vaccines might discourage people who are queuing up to buy the vaccine. However, “it’s quite likely that too little vaccine is one of the things that’s making people more interested in getting vaccinated, frankly.”
He further added, “We think it will get easier to find vaccine in the weeks that come.”
He also said that states, localities and health providers should not hold back the vaccine that is available with them. Instead, they should sell the vaccines to the people who require them as more stock is on its way to being delivered.
Vaccine estimates gone wrong
In September, the U.S. officials had estimated that 40 million vaccine doses would be available by the end of October and 250 million doses by the end of flu season in March or April.
In a letter to the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins wrote, “It now appears that much of the vaccine could arrive only after many people have already been infected with H1N1.”
Connecticut independent Senator Joseph Lieberman said that errors in calculating the available doses of H1N1 vaccine will have far-reaching effects that go past the mounting public dissatisfaction.
The unreliable estimates will ultimately lead to a failure of the vaccine distribution efforts, concluded Lieberman.
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