Nov 9, 2009 6:21 pm US/Eastern
Getting Answers On H1N1 Vaccine Distribution
HARRISBURG (KDKA) ―
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Justin Sullivan /Getty Images
We all know the H1N1 vaccine has been scarce, but why isn't there more available by now?
And why are some low-risk adults getting it while many children considered high-risk still haven't gotten the shots?
Everette James, secretary of Pennsylvania's Department of Health, knows the numbers are not adding up.
"It's a couple million doses short," he said.
He doesn't play any role in the production of the H1N1 vaccine, but it is his department's job to oversee the distribution of it in Pennsylvania.
But there's a problem.
"Everything is kind of running behind and a little bit short," he said.
The amounts promised by the federal government haven't come through.
What went wrong?
"I'm not sure anything significant went wrong," he said. "I think unfortunately H1N1 threw us a little bit of a curveball."
One problem is that it's taken longer than anticipated to grow the virus to make vaccine and that's meant an unexpected delay.
At least 20 people in Pennsylvania have now died of H1N1, including a child. The question is if more vaccine had been available sooner, would that number be different?
"If you can get out in front of the disease with vaccine certainly you're [going to] have much lower incidents of death," James said.
And the shortage has led to frustration with how the state is coordinating the distribution of the vaccine that is available.
Highfield: "[Parents with young kids] go to their pediatric doctors and they're not able to get the vaccine and then they see that college kids at Pitt and CMU are getting the vaccine and they want to know why the children wouldn't come first? Why wouldn't the kids get that vaccine first? Why wouldn't the kids get that vaccine first?"
James: "Well, I think that is a legitimate question."
But it has a complicated answer.
"What we had to look at was where's the disease? So, where did disease come up initially? The colleges," he said.
And there's another factor.
It turns out, the vaccine is made by a handful of manufacturers. Each is licensed by the FDA to produce it for different groups, such as people 18 and older, or people two to 49 who are not pregnant.
Because of those licensing rules, the state can only distribute what it receives to the groups it was made for.
And early on, despite the orders that were placed, more vaccine arrived made for college kids, less arrived of what was needed for children or pregnant women.
But there's something else that has Dr. Bruce Dixon, director of the Allegheny County Health Department, criticizing the state's distribution plan.
"I think we could have better coordinated who is going to get what," he said.
The state asked providers, places like schools, hospitals or doctors willing to administer the vaccine. But Dr. Dixon says that has led to unequal distribution and that the state should have gone through his office.
"We have some physician practices who got large quantities of vaccine and other areas who got none," he said. "And I would have hoped that we would have been more intimately involved in the distribution so that we could have made sure that everybody had an equal shot at getting vaccine who needed it."
"Had we had the luxury of time I think we could have used - you know - different paths to I guess aggregate more vaccine in one place so it could be redistributed but we really didn't really have the luxury of time in this case," James said.
He admits relying on the providers isn't perfect.
"I think overall, this system is functioning pretty well," James said.
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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