U.S. manufacturers of vaccine against Asian influenza did better than they had expected: last week, well ahead of schedule, two companies turned out half a million shots and (with an eye to public relations) allocated most of the vaccine to meet civilian demand. Philadelphia's National Drug Co. was ready with 260,000 straight anti-Asian shots, plus 60,000 shots of polyvalent vaccine, compounded for use against three types of flu recently current, including the Asian. Lederle Laboratories of Pearl River, N.Y. had churned out 180,000 doses, set aside half for the armed forces (which will do their own testing, thus hold up distribution for a while), put up the other half immediately for top-priority civilian use. Lederle was pricing its vaccine at about $6.60 for a vial containing ten shots; so the price to patients should be $1 plus doctor's fee.
The Priorities. The big question still was who would get the single-shot vaccine when. The armed forces were virtually assured of their needs (4,000,000 shots) by the contract date of Sept. 30. It looked as though there would be more than that number of shots ready for civilians by then. But beyond urging vaccine allocations to states by population, the U.S. Public Health Service was still doing nothing positive to control distribution. It relied instead on mere recommendations that physicians and other health workers come first, to be followed by workers in transportation and other essential industries. National Drug and Lederle sent their first releases to jobbers in a dozen cities across the U.S., left it to them to decide how to dole out shots. In general, first to get the vaccine would be doctors and nurses. In some areas, the police had next priority. There was little likelihood that any vaccine would be available for the general, non-priority public until October, but the absence of regulations left things open for individual physicians to start slipping shots to favored patients, and for a black market in the vaccine.
Indianapolis' Pitman-Moore Co., not yet ready with any vaccine, promised to send 500,000 shots, free, to doctors for themselves and their nurses or assistants — enough to take care of all the 180,000 U.S. physicians in private practice and their staffs. Though Surgeon General Leroy E. Burney of PHS was convinced that the mutant Asian strain of type A virus had by now been "seeded" in every state of the union (20,000 to 25,000 cases have so far been reported in the U.S.), there was no way of predicting when or where the expected epidemic would first break out. Any time from September to November was possible.
The Precautions. To be on guard, the American Hospital Association advised all hospitals to inoculate their staffs as soon as possible, and (though there is no curative treatment for the influenza itself) to lay in ample stocks of antibiotics, oxygen and other supplies to combat such frequent flu complications as pneumonia. Toughest recommendation of all: hospitals should lay down firm admission policies before the epidemic strikes, announce that uncomplicated cases of flu cannot be admitted. . . .