A Local and State Partnership for Influenza Preparedness: The Minnesota Influenza Vaccine Inventory Log

When Chiron announced its inability to provide influenzavaccine during the 2004–05 season, state and localpublic health agencies in Minnesota immediately took action to assess and redistribute existing influenza vaccine supplies to those at the highest risk. This experience in 2004, coupled with product delivery delays and shortages in other years, prompted development of a Web-based tool to inventory influenza vaccine orders prior to the start of the 2005–06 influenza season. The resulting data were summarized by region of the state, and the proportion of coverage for the priority risk group population was computed. Based on the importance of having order information available, this vaccine inventory tool will be continually refined and utilized in preparation for each upcoming influenza season. KEY WORDS: influenza, public health, vaccine, Web-based application On October 5, 2004, Chiron, one of the two Food and Drug Administration–approved vaccine manufac-turers licensed to sell influenza vaccine in the United States, announced that it would not be delivering vac-cine to the market, representing a loss of roughly half of the vaccine supply. This marked the beginning of a unique public health “crisis”—a crisis in prevention.1 Minnesota is uniquely well situated to handle a vaccine shortage because we have a strong local public health infrastructure in each of 87 counties. Within 2 days of the announced vaccine shortage, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) and local pub-lic health departments (LHDs) conducted snapshot sur-veys to find out who had vaccine and who needed it across the state. These surveys enabled public health