Many high-risk patients got flu shots this year.(Clinical Rounds)

WASHINGTON -- Despite the severe shortage of influenza vaccine this winter, the elderly, young children, and others at risk were able to find and receive shots, officials said at the National Immunization Conference sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Once it was known last October that Chiron Corp. would not be able to deliver its half of the nation's vaccine supply, the CDC immediately set up a special surveillance team to track where the vaccine was going and who received it, said Susan Chu, Ph.D., acting director of the agency's Office of Science Policy and Technology Transfer.

Seventeen new questions on the flu vaccine were added to the monthly Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey. From November 2004 to February 2005, 105,473 adults and 35,106 children (by proxy) were interviewed, said Michael Link, Ph.D., of the CDC's behavioral survey branch.

And, in a change of pace designed to keep state and federal agencies on top of the shortage, data were submitted to CDC weekly, not monthly, and were analyzed within days, giving states new data every 12 days or so, Dr. Link said.

As of late March, the survey found that vaccines were received by 63.5% of respondents over age 65, 26% of 18- to 64-year-olds at high risk, and 36% of health care workers, said Gary Euler, Dr.P.H., of the CDC National Immunization Program's epidemiology and surveillance division. These figures were slightly higher than those gathered through January and reported in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. According to that data, 62.7% of those over age 65 years, 25.5% of those with high-risk conditions aged 18-64 years, and 35.7% of health care workers received vaccinations (MMWR 2005; 54:304-7).

Through February, among healthy Americans, 7.2% of those aged 18-49 years, and 17.3% of those 50-64 ...