MedImmune FluMist (nasal) influenza vaccine recall

December 23, 2009  |   Posted in Blog, Chronic Illness   |   0 Comments   Tags: FluMist, FluMist recall, Infectious Diseases, vaccine

The news went out last night that the vaccine manufacturer, MedImmune, was recalling millions of doses of their nasal live attenuated influenza vaccine, FluMist.  I just now received the information from the CDC that explains the purpose of the recall.

Imagine that the nasal vaccine is a carton of milk that you bought in October.  In October you poured the milk over your bowl of cereal and enjoyed it immensely. Then you put the milk back in the refrigerator.  Putting the orange juice in front of the milk carton, you forgot it was there…until yesterday.  Now on rediscovering the milk, you notice the carton is past it’s expiration date.  You could drink it and probably nothing will happen.  Or you can toss the milk and buy some that you know will be fresh and good.  Most of us would just toss the milk and go to the store for some fresh milk.

That is kind of what happened with the nasal vaccine.  The company has been monitoring the “potency” of the vaccine and it has been perfectly fine up until just recently.  They found that the potency of the vaccine had dropped below what they wanted it to be, so they asked everyone to return the vaccine (like tossing the carton of milk even when its probably still good) from the questionable lots.

So here’s the important part.  Even if we kept using the vaccine now, it would probably work.  But rather than take any chance that it will lose more of its strength and have to do a “do-over”, they are pulling the lots.

So no one has to fret…except we at the health department who need to find out if we have any of the lots on our shelf.  If we do, we’ll send them back.

No one has to get revaccinated.  No one has to know what lot they received because all the vaccines that were given were potent at the time they were given.