Mayor Rules Out Lottery for Flu Shots

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Mayor Bloomberg ruled out instituting a lottery to parcel out flu shots to New Yorkers who need them and called on doctors yesterday to use “a bit of common sense” and to provide the limited number of vaccines available to those who need them most: the elderly and young children.


The mayor’s comments come amid near-hysteria over the short supply of vaccines available in America after a major manufacturer of the vaccines, Chiron Corp., announced that it would supply no flu vaccine this season because of health issues at its plant in Britain. Chiron was to provide about half the flu shots administered in America this year.


“The flu season tends to be January more than October and November, so we have a little time,” Mr. Bloomberg told reporters at a press conference on the Upper West Side. “We are going to focus on getting the vaccine to high-risk people, when if they do get the flu, there is a much greater potential for death. We’re not going to trust this to the lottery. We have to do the best we can. We’re going to make sure that people who need it get it.”


A lottery for flu vaccination is planned by a New Jersey township. Officials of Bloomfield decided to use a lottery system to provide the 300 doses of vaccine the township had secured for senior citizens, adults with chronic medical conditions, pregnant women, and people living at nursing homes. The officials originally expected to get about 1,000 doses of the vaccine.


The idea of the lottery was to prevent a stampede to pharmacies and supermarkets for vaccine and to prevent the elderly from being turned away, or even collapsing of exhaustion as they waited their turn for shots. In the San Francisco Bay area, a 79-year-old woman collapsed and died Thursday after waiting for hours in a flu-shot line.


Mr. Bloomberg said the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is convinced the city will be getting more vaccines in the coming weeks, and that could well take the pressure off officials trying to distribute shots to those who need them most.


“The fact of the matter is the city only has a certain amount, and we’re going to make sure that we get it to those people who really need it and we will not tolerate anyone trying to scam, black-market, or anything else,” the mayor said.


“Doctors have got to exercise a bit of common sense and not just give it out to their patients,” he continued. “They must understand that they are part of the entire health-services delivery in this city. If they happen to have access to vaccines, they have to make sure it goes only to patients who are in the high-risk groups and then turn back the extras to other doctors.”


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