Americans who are frustrated with shortages of swine flu vaccine place slightly more blame on drug companies than the federal government, a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll showed Monday.
With swine flu widespread in 48 states and pediatric deaths mounting -- 129 children have died from flu complications since April, federal officials reported Friday -- only 5% of respondents have received the vaccine since it became available in October, the poll shows.
Fifty-eight percent place a great deal or moderate amount of the blame for the lack of vaccine on the federal government, the poll shows, and 62% blame drug companies.
"We know we need to do some things better, like improving vaccine production technology so that we can get more vaccine out," says Kristine Sheedy of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
As of Friday, just 38 million doses were available for the pregnant women, health workers, children 6 months to 18 years old and adults with chronic conditions such as asthma who are most vulnerable to complications, officials say. Vaccine production has been halting because swine flu virus, also known as H1N1, doesn't multiply as quickly as seasonal flu viruses in chicken eggs, the crucible in which flu vaccine viruses are grown.
The results are based on telephone interviews Friday through Sunday with a national sample of about 1,500 adults 18 or older. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. It is 6 percentage points for the 448 parents who responded to questions about their children.
So far, the poll shows, 17% of adults have tried and failed to get vaccinated, and 19% of adults haven't tried because they didn't think vaccine would be available. An additional 30% said they didn't feel they needed a swine flu shot, and 17% feared the vaccine might be harmful.
Parents had more success vaccinating children under 18, the poll shows. About 17% succeeded in getting children vaccinated, and 20% tried to vaccinate their children and failed.
The USA TODAY/Gallup results mirror those of a survey released Friday by the Harvard School of Public Health. The authors of that survey say many people are balancing the perceived risks of the vaccine against the potential risks of swine flu, which has so far proven to be a mild to moderate illness in most patients.
"The severity of the outbreak could have an impact on the wait-and-see crowd," Harvard survey leader Robert Blendon says. "If the cases were very severe, that could move some of those who were concerned about safety to get vaccine."
To see more of USAToday.com, or to subscribe, go to http://www.usatoday.com
Copyright 2009 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.