Web Site Tracks Vaccine Supply

State health departments, which are scrambling to ensure that their highest-risk residents get flu shots, can now log on to a secure, private government Web site to see how much vaccine has been shipped to their states and where it has gone. Julie Gerberding, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Wednesday that Aventis Pasteur — the only U.S. supplier of flu shots this year after vaccine maker Chiron's supply was scrapped because of contamination — has been "extremely cooperative" in giving state health officials information that normally would be proprietary. Public health officials are "looking very hard at how we can take the remaining stock of Aventis and MedImmune (maker of FluMist, a nasal spray flu vaccine) and distribute it equitably," Gerberding told the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, an expert panel meeting in Atlanta that advises federal health officials on vaccine policy.