Shingles vaccine tough to obtain

National shortage of drug worsening, pharmacists say.

A national shortage of a new vaccine to protect against the painful rash known as shingles is worsening, say pharmacists and consumers, even as the manufacturer announced plans this week for more consistent deliveries.

Demand for the two-dose Shingrix vaccine has skyrocketed since it became broadly available in the United States in the spring. The new vaccine provides much greater protection than an older, single-shot vaccine from a disease that affects one in three adults, and can cause debilitating nerve pain that can last months, or even years. Demand is surging because federal health officials last year recommended it for healthy adults at age 50, a decade earlier than previous recommendations. Federal health officials also urged it for people who have had shingles, as well as those who received the old vaccine, or have had or are unsure if they have had chickenpox. Those recommendations took British drugmaker GlaxoSmithKline by surprise, leaving it scrambling to keep up with demand, say company representatives.

Company officials estimate about 115 million people in the United States, who are 50 and older, are eligible for the vaccine. Shingles, a painful condition that causes blisters, occurs when the chickenpox virus resurfaces decades later. There are an estimated 1 million cases of shingles each year in the United States; the risk of the disease increases as people age.

“All I want for Christmas is for my pharmacy to get some Shingrix,” tweeted one woman earlier this week.

Consumers have been searching for pharmacies with Shingrix doses on neighborhood listservs, in postings on social media, and in visits to pharmacy after pharmacy. A Pennsylvania man wrote on Facebook a week ago that his wife was told by her local supermarket pharmacy that the waiting list was about 12 months. A CVS pharmacist in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and a Walgreen’s pharmacist in downtown Washington, D.C. said this week that they hadn’t received any shipments since August.

“It’s worse now,” said a pharmacist at Walgreen’s, who declined to give her name because she wasn’t authorized to speak to reporters. The pharmacy is not keeping a waiting list because “there’s no promise of when it’s going to come out again.”

“As soon as they get it in, it’s going out pretty quick,” said Michael Rothholz, chief strategy officer for the American Pharmacists Association.

Pharmacies began offering the vaccine broadly in midMarch. By May, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was reporting shortages. Since the spring, drugstore chain CVS has had difficulty keeping an ample supply across the chain’s 9,800 stores and more than 1,100 clinics because of limited supply from the manufacturer, said spokeswoman Amy Lanctot.

Shipments arrive about every three weeks, she said. The supply “did get a little better in the fall,” she said. But since then, it has gotten worse, she said. “It’s just not being made in the amounts that are needed.”