Lieberman, Collins remain unsatisfied with H1N1 vaccine distribution

The chairman and ranking member of a key Senate panel on Monday expressed dissatisfaction with the Obama administration’s effort to distribute the H1N1 vaccine. 

Sens. Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins, who head the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, penned a letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, which blamed the shortage of the vaccine partly on the agency’s decision to identify an initial target group that comprised nearly 50 percent of the U.S. population. 

“A federal message of broad eligibility and different states targeting different populations sends a confusing message to the public about who is able to get the vaccine in their community,” they wrote. “The manner in which this vaccination campaign has been carried out bears some responsibility in contributing to the public frustration and apprehension evidenced in communities across the country.”

Lieberman (I) and Collins (R) said that a letter Sebelius penned to their panel last month about the shortage was “a sure sign that lessons have not been learned to ensure that this situation does not happen again” because it did not admit any missteps on behalf of the federal government. The senators' letter was sent ahead of a committee hearing on the vaccine tomorrow at which HHS officials are scheduled to testify.

Federal officials identified as the target group children, young adults, healthcare personnel, emergency medical workers, people with chronic medical conditions, pregnant women and young infants, a group comprising 159 million people. In her letter last month, Sebelius said federal officials identified a smaller target group that should receive the vaccine first in case of a shortage. Distribution, however, was largely left up to state and local authorities.

“We cannot have our state and local health departments making vaccination decisions based on faulty or no projections of supply,” Lieberman and Collins wrote. “The fact is the response failed to meet the public demand for vaccine -- demand that the federal government accelerated by advising a larger group of the public to be vaccinated that it had the resources to meet."

In her letter, Sebelius blamed the shortage on delays related to the manufacturers and poor production yields. She also said delays in producing the seasonal influenza vaccine contributed further to distribution problems.

But critics maintain that the government cast its net too wide by identifying such a large target group, a decision that led to confusion on the local level regarding which individuals should receive the vaccine first.

The Centers for Disease Control had planned to distribute around 30 million doses of the vaccine before the end of October but under 17 million doses had been sent out by the end of the month. In July, the Obama administration said that anywhere from 80 to 120 million doses of the vaccine could have been sent out by drug manufacturers.

Since September, nearly 3,000 Americans have died from the flu strain and about 29,000 have been hospitalized. Most cases, however, are not fatal or life-threatening.

“Most important, your response to our letter misses the larger point--that the federal government cannot view as sufficient an approach in which the highest risk individuals wait in long lines that ultimately do not get them vaccinated,” the senators wrote.

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