Flow of H1N1 vaccines picking up in U.S., CDC says

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Editor

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The flow of swine flu vaccines to the U.S. market is picking up, health and corporate officials said on Tuesday, and now the challenge will be to get the drugs to people.

Dr. Anne Schuchat of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said 41.1 million doses of H1N1 vaccines are either available or have been delivered but that state and local health officials still face logistical problems.

"I can't tell you how many times in our outreach to our counterparts that we got messages back saying 'It's Friday, we are furloughed' or 'We are out today'," Schuchat told a Senate health subcommittee hearing.

Many U.S. states have furloughed workers -- making them take a day off without pay -- because of budgets hit by the recession.

"I think the key barrier to our immunization effort is really the fragility of the public health infrastructure," Schuchat said. "There have been about 15,000 jobs lost in that sector over the past two years."

Public health officials have been warning about the problem for years but Schuchat said nothing has really forced the issue -- until this pandemic.

"You wait until the bridge collapses before someone cares about it," Schuchat said in an interview after the hearing.

Schuchat also defended a controversial decision by New York City authorities to give some vaccines to bankers such as those at Goldman Sachs.

"Many adults are vaccinated with seasonal flu (vaccine) in the workplace," Schuchat said, noting that young adults with asthma or diabetes, pregnant women or parents with infants too young to be vaccinated are in the priority groups and could also be employed at banks.

"We want it to be convenient, accessible and available."

Google worked with the U.S. government to provide one tool, at www.google.com/flushot.

"At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting," the Internet search company said in a statement.

OUTPUT RISING

Schuchat said the government had learned some lessons about how to manage expectations. The Health and Human Services Department has been criticized for predicting that as many as 120 million doses of vaccine would have been available by now.

"We tried to let people know that bumps could happen, that managing influenza vaccine is always unpredictable," Schuchat said. But the message "wasn't as well absorbed as we would have liked."