For more information: www.mainepublichealth.gov

Maine Flu Vaccine Hot Line: 1.888.257.0990

Who gets flu vaccine?

Highest priority:

• High-risk children (all children 6 to 23 months and children 2 to 18 years with underlying chronic medical conditions including those on chronic aspirin therapy.

• Appropriate residents of long-term care facilities.

Next level, the most vulnerable:

• Adults 65 years and older.

• Adults younger than 65 suffering from chronic underlying medical conditions.

• Women who will be pregnant during the influenza season.

Priority on standby:

• Health care workers involved in direct patient care.

• Care-givers of infants younger than 6 months.

(Source: Maine Bureau of Health)

How to get on the flu shot priority list

Neither Central Maine Medical Center nor St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center are maintaining lists of people considered to be priority patients for flu shots.

Patients need to contact their private physicians, said spokesmen for both hospitals. They shouldn’t call the hospitals directly.

The state Bureau of Health has issued protocols directing private doctors to maintain lists of patients who meet Centers for Disease Control and Prevention criteria for flu inoculation. When flu clinics are scheduled, those doctors will notify qualifying patients when and where they should go to get the vaccine.

People with questions about their priority status also should contact their doctors directly, the hospital spokesmen said.

More vaccine on way to state

Another 80,000 doses of flu vaccine are on the way to Maine for distribution by the state Bureau of Public Health.

That supply will be added to 15,000 doses already on hand, according to an update posted on the bureau’s Web site. Still, the combined vaccine falls far short of the 150,000 doses the state originally ordered from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, is calling on the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to recognize “the unique needs of individual states, particularly Maine,” and to ensure that available doses be targeted where vaccine is most needed.

HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson said earlier this month that flu vaccine would become available by early next year for anyone who wanted it. That prediction isn’t universally accepted, however.

“It’s really too soon to tell” if supplies will improve, Central Maine Medical Center Vice President Chuck Gill said Monday.

Meanwhile, the CDC on its Web site said the nation remains largely flu-free. Nine states – including New Hampshire – along with New York City “reported sporadic influenza activity” last week, said the CDC, but only two specimens tested by the World Health Organization proved to be flu-positive.

The vaccine crisis erupted earlier this month when British health officials quarantined supplies made in England for the California-based Chiron Corp. The British said Chiron’s vaccine was possibly contaminated.

Aventis Pasteur and Chiron are the only two manufacturers of flu vaccine serving the United States. A third company makes a limited supply of a live bacteria nasal mist that’s appropriate for use only by healthy people.

Chiron was to have supplied Maine with 123,000 doses of the state’s 150,000 dose order.

“The unique population characteristics of Maine make a simple allocation to states of only half their original Chiron order an inappropriate means of distributing this essential vaccine,” said Snowe in a statement issued by her office. “Maine has the seventh greatest proportion of residents 65 years of age and older,” she continued. “Such a disproportionately large senior population requires some adjustment of the allocation, just as the number of individuals in each of the risk groups should also be taken into account.”

Snowe also called on the federal Food and Drug Administration to step up its evaluation of flu vaccine made by ID Biomedical of Canada. That company has estimated that it could provide the United States with between 10 million and 15 million doses of vaccine, but federal approval of the distribution is required.

Russ Donahue, the director of marketing at St. Mary’s Regional Medical Center in Lewiston, estimated that that hospital alone has 10,000 people 65 or over in its active records who qualify for flu vaccine.

St. Mary’s and Central Maine Medical Center have combined their available flu vaccine but only have a total of about 8,000 doses. CMMC couldn’t provide the number of elderly patients who qualify for vaccine Monday afternoon.

Hospitals such as St. Mary’s and CMMC order flu vaccine directly from manufacturers. Private, unaffiliated medical practices do likewise.

The state’s supply of vaccine is distributed through state facilities and rural health care centers.

In Maine, the flu season generally begins shortly after Thanksgiving and can continue into March. For flu vaccine to be effective, people need it in their system for a week or more to build up resistance to infection, medical professionals say.