UHS Receives More Vaccine

University Health Services announced yesterday that it has obtained additional seasonal flu vaccines and will be rescheduling multiple graduate school clinics that it had initially suspended last week due to a vaccine shortage.

Undergraduate flu clinics were not included among the temporarily suspended clinics.

“I’m absolutely relieved that the supply is here,” said Dorothy Wilder, a nurse at the Law School clinic. “We’re trying to vaccinate as many people as possible.”

In total, there are five remaining flu clinics this week, which will take place today through Thursday. Two of these clinics will be held at undergraduate house dining halls—Mather is scheduled for tonight and Eliot for tomorrow night.

The other three clinics, which will be located at the Graduate School of Education, the Law School, and the School of Public Health, were newly scheduled yesterday.

According to UHS Director David S. Rosenthal ’59, UHS has ordered about 19,000 doses of seasonal flu vaccines this year.

He said that UHS has already administered 16,000 vaccines this year—about 33 percent more than the approximately 12,000 doses given out last year.

Last week, when a distributor failed to deliver 1,600 additional doses on time, UHS was forced to cancel several of its final clinics at the graduate schools.

“Some people were upset,” Wilder said. “We had no idea that we would not receive the vaccine that was scheduled to show up [last week].”

Those doses were later delivered during the weekend.

According to a UHS statement, UHS has slightly more than 2,000 seasonal flu vaccines left in stock when combined with vaccines on hand and those obtained from other providers.

“We are pleased to be able to organize one more rounmade available “soon” by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, Rosenthal added.

UHS has ordered between 12,000 and 13,000 doses of H1N1 vaccines. Rosenthal said the first shipment will be reserved for people designated high-risk by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—including pregnant women, medical services personnel, and caretakers of young children.

UHS has a list of about 300 to 400 people at the University who qualify as high-risk and who will receive the vaccine when it first arrives.

—Staff writer Manning Ding can be reached at ding3@fas.harvard.edu

—Staff writer Danielle J. Kolin can be reached at dkolin@fas.harvard.edu.