Nationwide, nearly all of the cases of flu this year have been swine flu, said CDC Director Thomas R. Frieden in a conference call with reporters.
Several states have begun administering FluMist to target populations, Frieden said. He said the H1N1 pandemic has spread across the country and that the states have ordered more than 2 million doses.
The backlog in Maryland remains significant. More than 1,000 offices have placed orders for about 220,000 doses of FluMist so far in Maryland's computerized system. That includes most hospitals, all local health departments and large doctors offices.
Two thousand more providers in Maryland have expressed interest in offering vaccine, but have not been approved. Meanwhile, the 25,300 doses that Maryland was allowed to order on Monday have been committed. The same with the 3,600 doses ordered Friday and the 31,600 ordered Sept 30.
To dole them out, Reed sat Monday behind his desk, piled high with folders and lists. He's apparently too busy to get his seasonal flu shot, though he made sure that his wife and two daughters got them. The line at the state health department clinic was too long for him.
At 3:45 p.m., he called Kimberly Sharpe-Scott, a state epidemiologist, into the room. She had the list of all the orders and a list of VFCs, or vaccine for children providers, mainly pediatricians. They started with Prince George's County.
Reed called out identification numbers assigned to each provider, and Sharpe-Scott made sure there were no duplicate orders. If there was a provider that Reed wasn't sure served kids, he had Blythe check them on the computer in back of Reed's office. They picked about a half dozen in Prince George's to receive the first doses of vaccine, then repeated the process for Baltimore and Montgomery counties.
By 4:10 p.m., with 18,600 doses left, Reed handed the sheet of highlighted providers to Dana Mack-Marcus, the enrollment coordinator for the VFC program, who typed them into the federal computer system called Vacman. From there, the distributor McKessen Corp. would pack temperature-controlled trucks with vaccines and send them directly to the providers. Later, when the state can fill orders from smaller providers, the shipments will go to a state warehouse where local workers will send them out.
Mack-Marcus planned to recheck her numbers to ensure that they were right. Another manager would check, too. In all, 21 full-time and temporary workers in the office would have a hand in this.
