Flu-vaccine sellers jab buyers with sharp increases in price

By Todd C. Frankel
St. Louis Post-Dispatch

	MARK HUMPHREY / AP Tate Edmondson, 5, his mother, Valarie, and father, Tyler, wait yesterday for Tate to be treated at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital Pediatric Emergency Room in Nashville, Tenn. Emergency-room visits for the flu have risen despite efforts to discourage them.
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"It's pretty clear someone is being taken advantage of here," said Sue Denny with Missouri's state immunization program, "and it's easy to see who."

The hunt for flu vaccine has become so difficult that the U.S. government was forced to look overseas to England, where on Monday it bought 375,000 doses of flu shots made for the European market. Even that infusion is not expected to make a sizable dent in public demand.

Meanwhile, private U.S. companies have been offering for sale several hundred thousand vaccine doses at a steep markup to health agencies across the country. The companies say they are doing nothing wrong. It is a simple case of supply and demand, they say.

"We're actually doing people a favor," said Sarah Trammell, sales manager of California-based CT International.

Trammell said her company finds distributors that have bulk flu vaccine for sale, and then determines how much the vaccine is fetching on the open market. The company then looks for customers willing to pay the price. "Being in the position we're in, at least we find the product," Trammell said.

U.S. flu update The government said yesterday that flu is now widespread in 36 states — almost everywhere except the Upper Midwest and a few Eastern states. In its weekly bulletin, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the flu is now widespread in Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wyoming. All the rest have at least some flu. — The Associated Press

But even she wasn't sure her company would find buyers willing to pay Tuesday's offer of $215 a vial, "But crazily enough, they are." A vial contains 10 doses.

The Department of Health and Human Services paid $74 a vial for the vaccine it bought from England, about twice what it typically pays. The agency has heard reports of private companies selling high-priced vaccine in the United States.

"The price-gouging is not something anybody supports. You're looking at a public-health situation here," department spokesman Bill Pierce said.

James Apa, a spokesman for Public Health — Seattle & King County, said no distributors have tried to inflate the price of vaccine the department purchases for adults at high risk for flu complications. The Washington state Department of Health, which furnishes vaccine for high-risk children, receives all of its vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The increased cost of acquiring the vaccine in other parts of the country is not expected to be passed along to the public, health officials said. Health agencies likely will absorb the added expense, they said.

Demand for the vaccine has surged in recent weeks.

One reason is that public-health officials warned that this year's flu season was off to a worrisome start. That was followed by the flu-related deaths of several children in Colorado. Then, at the end of November, the two U.S. makers of the flu shot said they shipped their entire inventory for the year, and that it would take too long to make more. All of these factors combined to exhaust the United States' flu-vaccine supply for the first time in history.

Vaccine makers in past years threw out millions of unused doses, which are reformulated annually to combat new flu strains. In 2002, 13 million shots were tossed after production of 95 million doses. Manufacturers this year scaled back production to 83 million doses. FluMist, a nasal-spray vaccine, is being offered for the first time this year, with about 4 million doses available. Only people ages 4-49 can use the product.

Another company selling vaccine is Carters Trading in Fayettesville, Ark. It normally distributes hardwood flooring. But owner Cynthia Bonner started making calls to public-health agencies across the country this week offering vaccine vials for $165 each.

Bonner said she contacted health officials in Texas, New Mexico, Florida, Colorado and New York, among other states.

She had 150,000 vials for sale at the beginning of this week. She said she was down to 50,000 by Tuesday.

Her company acts only as a middleman for a medical-supplies distributor who didn't have the manpower to handle the calls, she said. She described her offer to take on the job as a favor. Bonner said she didn't want to sell vaccine to private health companies that might hoard the product. Instead, she wanted to put the flu shots into the hands of public officials as quickly as possible. "We could've done a very silent transaction, but we've chosen to go this route," Bonner said.

She said her company is making little profit on the transaction and that the vaccine price was jacked up by Chiron, the vaccine producer, because it was a late order. Chiron denied that claim, saying it has fixed-price contracts with all distributors.

Trammell of CT International said she's heard reports that some companies are selling a single vaccine vial for $300 now. That's what the market will bear, she said.

"It's just about providing a service," Trammell said. "We let the customer make the call."

Seattle Times medical reporter Warren King contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2003 The Seattle Times Company