skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Friday, October 11, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Florida picks up the pieces after Hurricane Milton; Georgia elected officials say Hurricane Helene was a climate change wake-up call; Hosiers are getting better civic education; the Senate could flip to the GOP in November; New Mexico postal vans go electric; and Nebraska voters debate school vouchers.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Civil rights groups push for a voter registration deadline extension in Georgia, federal workers helping in hurricane recovery face misinformation and threats of violence, and Brown University rejects student divestment demands.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Hurricane Helene has some rural North Carolina towns worried larger communities might get more attention, mixed feelings about ranked choice voting on the Oregon ballot next month, and New York farmers earn money feeding school kids.

Pedatricians cut back on COVID shots as interest wanes

play audio
Play

Wednesday, September 11, 2024   

By Jackie Fortiér for KFF Health News.
Broadcast version by Suzanne Potter for California News Service reporting for the KFF Health News-Public News Service Collaboration


When pediatrician Eric Ball opened a refrigerator full of childhood vaccines, all the expected shots were there — DTaP, polio, pneumococcal vaccine — except one.

“This is where we usually store our covid vaccines, but we don’t have any right now because they all expired at the end of last year and we had to dispose of them,” said Ball, who is part of a pediatric practice in Orange County, California.

“We thought demand would be way higher than it was.”

Pediatricians across the country are pre-ordering the updated and reformulated covid-19 vaccine for the fall and winter respiratory virus season, but some doctors said they’re struggling to predict whether parents will be interested. Providers like Ball don’t want to waste money ordering doses that won’t be used, but they need enough on hand to vaccinate vulnerable children.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that anyone 6 months or older get the updated covid vaccination, but in the 2023-24 vaccination season only about 15% of eligible children in the U.S. got a shot.

Ball said it was difficult to let vaccines go to waste last year. It was the first time the federal government was no longer picking up the tab for the shots, and providers had to pay upfront for the vaccines. Parents would often skip the covid shot, which can have a very short shelf life compared with other vaccines.

“Watching it sitting on our shelves expiring every 30 days, that’s like throwing away $150 repeatedly every day, multiple times a month,” Ball said.

This year, Ball slashed his fall vaccine order to the bare minimum to avoid another costly mistake.

“We took the number of flu vaccines that we order, and then we ordered 5% of that in covid vaccines,” Ball said. “It’s a guess.”

That small vaccine order cost more than $63,000, he said.

Pharmacists, pharmacy interns, and techs are allowed to give covid vaccines only to children age 3 and up, meaning babies and toddlers would need to visit a doctor’s office for inoculation.

It’s difficult to predict how parents will feel about the shots this fall, said Chicago pediatrician Scott Goldstein. Unlike other vaccinations, covid shots aren’t required for kids to attend school, and parental interest seems to wane with each new formulation, he said. For a physician-owned practice such as Goldstein’s, the upfront cost of the vaccine can be a gamble.

“The cost of vaccines, that’s far and away our biggest expense. But it’s also the most important thing we do, you could argue, is vaccinating kids,” Goldstein said.

Insurance doesn’t necessarily cover vaccine storage accidents, which can put the practice at risk of financial ruin.

“We’ve had things happen like a refrigerator gets unplugged. And then we’re all of a sudden out $80,000 overnight,” Goldstein said.

South Carolina pediatrician Deborah Greenhouse said she would order more covid vaccines for older children if the pharmaceutical companies that she buys from had a more forgiving return policy.

“Pfizer is creating that situation. If you’re only going to let us return 30%, we’re not going to buy much,” she said. “We can’t.”

Greenhouse owns her practice, so the remaining 70% of leftover shots would come out of her pocket.

Vaccine maker Pfizer will take back all unused covid shots for young children, but only 30% of doses for people 12 and older.

Pfizer said in an Aug. 20 emailed statement, “The return policy was instituted as we recognize both the importance and the complexity of pediatric vaccination and wanted to ensure that pediatric offices did not have hurdles to providing vaccine to their young patients.”

Pfizer’s return policy is similar to policies from other drugmakers for pediatric flu vaccines, also recommended during the fall season. Physicians who are worried about unwanted covid vaccines expiring on the shelves said flu shots cost them about $20 per dose, while covid shots cost around $150 per dose.

“We run on a very thin margin. If we get stuck holding a ton of vaccine that we cannot return, we can’t absorb that kind of cost,” Greenhouse said.

Vaccine maker Moderna will accept covid vaccine returns, but the amount depends on the individual contract with a provider. Novavax will accept the return of only unopened vaccines and doesn’t specify the amount they’ll accept.

Greenhouse wants to vaccinate as many children as possible but said she can’t afford to stock shots with a short shelf life. Once she runs out of the doses she’s ordered, Greenhouse said, she plans to tell families to go to a pharmacy to get older children vaccinated. If pediatricians around the country are making the same calculations, doses for very small children could be harder to find at doctors’ offices.

“Frankly, it’s not an ideal situation, but it’s what we have to do to stay in business,” she said.

Ball, the California pediatrician, worries that parents’ limited interest has caused pediatricians to minimize their vaccine orders, in turn making the newest covid shots difficult to find once they become available.

“I think there’s just a misperception that it’s less of a big deal to get covid, but I’m still sending babies to the hospital with covid,” Ball said. “We’re still seeing kids with long covid. This is with us forever.”


Jackie Fortiér wrote this story for KFF Health News.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
A 2022 University of Indiana report concludes recent studies on voucher programs show that students attending private schools through voucher programs have experienced "large, negative impacts" on their achievement. (sheilaf2002/Adobe Stock)

Social Issues

play sound

Nebraska is one of four states with measures about state funding of private-school vouchers on the ballot this year. Referendum 435 asks voters to …


Social Issues

play sound

As Ohio heads into a pivotal election season, the divide between rural and urban voters might seem deep - but one expert says the gap isn't as wide …

Social Issues

play sound

After 17 years, the state of New York is re-evaluating its school funding formula. The state budget agreement calls for the Rockefeller Institute to …


Eric Greenlee, a student from Georgia Tech, installs water-level sensors in lakes at Lac du Flambeau to help monitor wild rice beds. (Photo courtesy Naomi Blinick)

Social Issues

play sound

By Spoorthy Raman for Mongabay.Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News…

Environment

play sound

Savannah's leaders are pointing out the ways federal dollars are being used to boost the area's resilience against climate change. In the aftermath …

The financially beleaguered U.S. Postal Service expects to save billions of dollars by using electric rather than gas-powered mail delivery trucks. (USPSoig.gov)

Environment

play sound

Neighborhoods across New Mexico and other states will soon be cleaner and quieter as the U.S. Postal Service rolls out its new electric mail-delivery …

Social Issues

play sound

Voting may be a bit more confusing than expected in Utah this year, as two of the four amendments on the ballot have now been voided. The Utah …

Social Issues

play sound

The Indiana Citizen, a nonpartisan voter information platform, aims to improve civic engagement in Indiana by helping voters make informed choices…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021