All members of the Tufts community who requested flu vaccinations have been inoculated, and a limited number of doses still remain, according to Dr. Margaret Higham, Medical Director of Health Services.
This year's success in protecting against the flu is in stark contrast to the troubles of last year's immunization season, when Health Services was only able to inoculate a small number of very high-risk students.
This season, a far larger supply of doses has been available, said Rita Stefanelli, a pharmacy manager at the Cambridge Health Alliance.
"The availability of flu vaccine this year was far better than last year on both the national and local level," Stefanelli wrote in an e-mail.
The variability of the flu vaccination supply stems from the complex and intricate process involved in creating the vaccines - a process that is essentially a scientific race to keep pace with the constantly-changing flu strains, which vary from year to year.
The nine-month vaccine production process involves identifying the specific strains of the flu expected to hit during a given year, choosing the three that are the most dangerous, and developing the vaccine to protect against these three.
Accordingly, Tufts and other healthcare providers must order their vaccines significantly in advance.
Last year's vaccine shortages stemmed from contamination issues during the manufacturing process in a British plant owned by Chiron Corp. - a flu-vaccine production giant - in the fall of 2004.
The same variable nature of the flu and its vaccine, while it did not result in severe shortages this year, did result in some delays for local healthcare providers.
"In the final analysis, there was more flu vaccine available this year than last year, but much of it was available late in the vaccination season," Stefanelli wrote.
According to Higham, "the main problem this year was the continuing manufacturing problems with [Chiron Corp.]."
The company, which had to meet specific qualifications, only received clearance from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in October 2005.
"Because the FDA was involved in making sure [Chiron Corp.] met those qualifications, it delayed the distributions," according to Stefanelli.
Health Services only received a small shipment in October, when the flu season started, and did not receive its first large shipment until Nov. 16. The last shipment arrived on Dec. 13.
After all of the shipments, the Tufts office only received 1,360 out of the 5,000 orders it had requested from PSS World Medical and Henry Schein, Inc., two distributors that purchase the vaccine from manufacturers.
Ultimately, PSS World Medical delivered 1,260 out of the 2,500 vaccinations requested of them, while Henry Schein only provided 100.
According to Higham, Health Services intentionally over-ordered with the expectation that only a fraction of the requested vaccinations would be delivered.
"We order extra vaccine in order to hedge our bets and give us some backup," she wrote in an e-mail. "Ordering vaccines is not an exact science. We want to have enough, but we don't want tons of excess because that is a waste."
Although the vaccination season began nearly four months ago, Higham said students can still get protection.
"[The flu] on average hits in January or February and lasts a couple months," Higham said. "This year the flu season has been extremely light."
Of the 1360 doses delivered to Health Services, approximately 1280 have been used, meaning that many students, faculty and staff members either remain unvaccinated or have sought other sources for inoculation.
Others, however, tout both the easy availability and the importance of immunization. "I thought that it might be really hard to get, but it wasn't," sophomore Matthew DiPierro said.
The remaining vaccines, which were earlier available only during special clinics, are now available by appointment at Health Services.
While worldwide concerns about the spread of avian flu has elevated the flu's profile in recent months, experts say the bird flu has not yet become a major public health issue among humans.
Though the disease has already killed several people worldwide vis-is bird-to-human transmission, the virus has not yet mutated into a form transmissible from person to person.
Experts fear the serious public health threat of a strain that would stem from an avian virus --different enough from human strains to make immune defense difficult - that could spread between humans.
Current flu vaccines would be powerless against such a strain. Only after this strain had mutated could a vaccine against it be created - meaning that the strain could potentially kill many before an effective, protective vaccine was developed and administered.
