Three new strains, late reagents, and a flu jab you may have to queue for

Family doctors in Latvia say they currently have no standard flu vaccines for children or adults, neither publicly funded nor privately paid, according to LSM as reported by Daily Baltic¹. Higher-dose shots for people over 60 and for adults with moderate or severe immunosuppression, and nasal vaccines for at-risk children aged two to 17, have been delivered to the practices that ordered them¹.

The reason is not demand alone. Latvia’s Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (SPKC) says European vaccine production has been delayed: this season’s vaccines change all three virus components rather than one, and reagents and other materials arrived late¹. Deliveries are planned for the end of this week¹.

England has a narrower version of the same squeeze. Community Pharmacy England says some pharmacies have exhausted their stocks of cell-cultured inactivated vaccine, known as IIVc, and that it was told IIVc is no longer available to order from manufacturers or wholesalers². Superdrug has closed online flu-jab bookings for the season, citing limited stock².

What happens next is a lesson in procedure. Under the NHS specification, a pharmacy without a recommended vaccine should send you to another provider that has one, or ask you to come back when stock arrives; a second-line vaccine, for adults aged 18 to 49 the egg-cultured IIVe, is allowed only when no first-line option can be found locally, and the pharmacy must record the steps it took². That is not red tape. It is how the right dose reaches the right arm.

For you: if you are eligible and turned away, ask where the nearest stock is rather than giving up. In Latvia’s case, the SPKC says you have not missed your chance, because the flu epidemic period has not yet begun¹.