NASA, cruise lines got early swine flu shots
ATLANTA -- Last fall, as swine flu cases mounted and parents sought to protect their kids, the hard-to-get vaccine was handed out in some surprising places: the Royal Caribbean cruise line, the headquarters of drug giant Merck, the Johnson Space Center and a Department of Energy office in Idaho.
In some cases, financial institutions and others got doses before county health departments and doctors' offices, according to records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Also, even though the federal government spent more than $1.6 billion to manufacture and distribute the vaccine, no complete record shows where it went. The absence of complete data makes it hard to spot waste and other problems, said James Colgrove, a Columbia University scholar on the history of immunization campaigns.
Overall, U.S. health officials and outside experts say the vaccination effort went very well.
At least 85 percent of the doses given in the first six weeks went to groups most at risk for flu complications, including children and other young people, pregnant women and those with certain health problems, according to an estimate from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Wall Street banks and cruise ship companies accounted for a tiny fraction of the 30,000 or so sites sent vaccine in those desperate early days.
CDC Director Thomas Frieden blamed the imperfect database on limited money and that the agency's top priority at the height of the epidemic was to get the vaccine out as quickly as possible.
Swine flu, first identified last April, has sickened about 59 million Americans, hospitalized 265,000 and killed about 12,000.
The U.S. death toll from the new H1N1 virus, declared a global epidemic, is about one-third of the estimated deaths from a regular flu season. But it was a fearsome threat because children and teens are much more vulnerable to it than seasonal flu.
The vaccine campaign began slowly in early October, with only 11 million doses shipping in the first three weeks, when swine flu was closing schools and approaching its most widespread levels. Ultimately, 86 million people were vaccinated.
CDC officials decided how many doses would go to each state, and state and local health departments decided where the vaccine was sent. Doctors' offices, large employers and even federal offices were among those that applied for the vaccine. Health officials told them to give it to at-risk people first, but there was no enforcement.
At many sites, lower-risk people got precious doses in the first two months:
■ When a U.S. Department of Energy office in Idaho Falls, Idaho, got about 200 doses in October, officials there offered it to higher-risk employees for four hours. When hardly anyone came, any worker who wanted it was vaccinated.
■ Royal Caribbean got 2,100 doses in October and November, vaccinating low-risk crew members along with staffers who care for children on Florida-based ships. The rationale? Employees aboard ships work with the public and would probably come into contact with people in priority groups.
■ NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston got about 800 doses in October and 1,400 more in November, some of which were sent to other NASA operations. At Johnson, doses were offered first to employees in priority groups, but NASA officials also set aside doses for healthy astronauts and their families.
■ Some doctors' offices gave it to healthy patients if people at risk didn't show up, said Dr. Jim Lederer, an official with Novant Health, a North Carolina-based hospital system.
■ Merck got 200 doses in October and 200 in November at its corporate headquarters in New Jersey.
■ A Boeing Co. site in Washington state received 100 doses in mid-October and 100 more the next month.
■ A Hovensa oil refinery in the Virgin Islands got 500 doses in early November, a Nucor Steel plant in South Carolina was given 100.
■ Hallmark Cards Inc. in Kansas City received 100.
Some of the eyebrow-raising shipments to Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs came to light last year.
