The Prince George’s County Health Department is holding flu shot clinics for residents who may fall into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine priority groups, which excludes most university students.
The county opened the clinics Dec. 6 after receiving an additional 1,600 doses more than a week ago. The clinics will continue to run until Dec. 17, although they’ve already exhausted most of the doses, county spokeswoman Pat Sullivan said. Students or faculty who are older than 65, suffering from a chronic illness or pregnant can make appointments at one of the three clinic locations in the county.
“The appointments are very limited; we maybe only have 15 left,” Sullivan said. “It’s until we run out of appointments; we are definitely towards the end.”
The county asked the state health department for more vaccines after the 3,000 doses it received in late November ran out. Though the county received twice as many as requested, it administered those doses in two days, Sullivan said. County officials ordered the extra 1,600 doses because they realized many elderly people still needed the shot and may have missed advertisements for previous clinics. More than 60,000 people over the age of 65 lived in the county at the time the 2000 Census was taken.
GlaxoSmithKline will deliver 1.2 million flu shot doses to the United States in the next month, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services news release. The CDC has yet to inform the Maryland health department if it will receive any of the doses. Greg Reed, program manager for the Maryland Center for Immunization at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, said he does not expect to know until next week.
“I’m not sure of what the eligibility standards are,” Reed said. “It’s going to be hard to say whether or not Maryland will qualify. If Maryland was to express a need, we’d probably be able to get a quantity of it.”
Reed said the CDC will wait until the nation’s supply is completely exhausted before it distributes the newest batch, which is an investigational new drug, or IND, and hasn’t been FDA-approved.
Because of its investigational status, the clinics administering the vaccine may be bound by additional safety protocols, Reed said. The vaccine might be administered through state clinics, rather than county clinics, to better control the vaccine’s distribution.
The new batch, which was produced in Germany, is of the same composition used in the United States. Although the health department is familiar with using INDs, it has “never seen anything on this wide a scale,” Reed said.
The county is one of the state’s priority areas for receiving the vaccine, Reed said, though neither he nor Sullivan know how many flu cases have occurred in the county.
“For right now it’s been pretty mild, but Maryland, like most states, doesn’t experience a peak until late January or February. It’s still early to say whether or not it’s going to be mild or heavy.”
