Reaching out to see the status of flu vaccine at your practices.
We are scheduled to give over 200 vaccines tomorrow- half of which were postponed from last Saturday. We have given out twice as many flu vaccines at this point compared to last year; two weeks in a row Sanofi has said our shipment is on its way only for nothing to happen. We are being told by our Sanofi rep that there is a federal hold on releasing lots and that nothing can be done until the lots are released. In addition, we are hearing the Fedex is struggling with cold chain delivery. We reached out to our local hospital but they have shortages of their own.
All this to say, how are you guys doing? How are your supply levels?
We had that year after year with Sanofi. We never know if or when we would be getting our deliveries. So when Flulaval from GSK was approved with the 0.5cc dose age 6 months and older we made the switch and have not had any delayed deliveries since. I don’t know if GSK has doses available for purchase at this time, but you could reach out to medical suppliers, Henry Schein, McKesson, etc. if they have doses available. We had to do that back when Sanofi wasn’t delivering on their pre-book doses.
Same here in AZ! We ran out of flu vaccine and Sanofi not shipping any further doses to us for 2 weeks. Stating lots are not being released as expected? Have had to cancel hundreds of patients scheduled for flu clinics. Frustrating!! How can Costco/Target/Walgreens/CVS have plenty of flu, but a pediatric medical home does not?
Same here in California, the demand is way higher than the supply and it’s frustrating. It is not right that Pediatricians have less access to supply than pharmacies!
In Texas normally no issues with GSK but this year difficult! Canceled 1 Saturday flu clinic. Hoping for delivery before next one in 2 weeks. They seem to be supplying school districts other large purchasers who I’m sure did not prebook orders in January. So much for supporting the medical home. On the positive side, late delivery gets us a 10% discount from GSK
I am reminded that it’s not just Sanofi, those ordering from GSK also have difficulties.
I am reminded that this is not just a COVID-related casualty. Yes, there are supply chain issues and yes, we are giving more flu vaccine than ever before, but, these delivery problems are not new.
We have delivery issues almost every year and almost every year the big pharmacy chains don’t seem to have these problems.
A happy postscript to this story and a reminder that it is good to have friends
As I mentioned in the initial post, we did have to cancel one outdoor clinic scheduled for October 3 which was postponed to October 10. This meant we had 2 clinics scheduled for October 10 for a combined total of 250ish appointments (I know, we are tiny ) and almost no flu vaccine left in either office.
When I posted Friday morning of the 9th, I was so frustrated and in such despair over the prospect of having to cancel- again.
In addition to posting to this group, I reached out to 4 local pediatric friends. First, all four emailed me back within an hour which would have been enough to make me feel better.
But, one of those practices wrote back to say, “we have enough to share; how can we help” That is pediatrics for you right there in that answer!
This led to an incredible 8 hour mini-adventure to purchase a bigger cooler, prep it with conditioned ice packs and the one extra data logger we had, drive the 75 minutes to get there, spend an hour ensuring that the cooler was correctly packed, holding temp and that we would be able to trust the data logger, drive back 75 minutes checking the data logger more frequently than necessary and being met by a wonderful RN who stayed until 8:00 that night to make sure that the vaccine would be correctly transferred to the fridges in each office.
Yesterday (October 10) 250 Green Tree Pediatrics patients got their flu vaccine.
) and almost no flu vaccine left in either office.