ATLANTA – Determined to avoid a repeat of last year’s flu-shot shortage, the government said Wednesday that vaccine makers will have 100 million doses ready for this winter.
That figure does not include the estimated 4.5 million doses of flu shots the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is planning to keep in reserve for children in its first-ever stockpiling of the vaccine.
For the 2003-04 season, there were 86.9 million doses available, compared with 95 million in 2002.
Last year, the nation’s two producers of flu shots shipped their entire supplies of the vaccine by December, thanks to an early start to the flu season and fears that a dominant flu strain would cause more severe illness than in recent years.
Clinics around the country ran out of the injected vaccine – which takes months to prepare – and officials urged healthy people to opt for a nasal-spray version to save the traditional flu shot for children and the elderly.
In the last flu season, the CDC found 152 children who died from the flu.
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