Lottery to be held for popular HPV vaccine

Health authorities in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, will hold a lottery to decide who can receive a popular vaccine for the human papilloma virus.

The first round of the lottery for 9-valent HPV vaccine is on Monday. The 1,305 who are selected will be guaranteed to get all three required shots.

The number of places in lotteries for the following months is still uncertain.

The vaccine, supplied by US-based pharmaceutical company Merck & Co, helps protect girls and women ages 9 to 26 against diseases like cervical cancer caused by nine types of HPV.

It has been highly sought after since August, when it was introduced to the city, and is an improvement over vaccines that cover two or four types of HPV. But it is in short supply.

“The aim of the lottery system is to provide both a fair and efficient reservation service. With this method, the chance for each applicant getting the vaccine is equal,” said Xie Xu, director of the Immunization Program Division at Shenzhen Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

He said the previous online reservation was not totally fair because of scalpers.

“And people don’t need to scramble for it against the clock,” he added.

The city’s health authority opened online reservations with the principle of “first come first serve” in September. In a round of reservations last month, the 1,000 places were fully booked in less than four hours.

On each day that reservations have opened during the last two months, the website received 3 million to 9 million page views.

However, only 600 to 1,000 doses were available every month throughout the city.

Its cheaper price is also a cause of its popularity. In the neighboring city of Hong Kong, where many women have gone to receive the vaccine, the three shots cost 7,000 to 10,000 yuan ($1,030 to $1,470), but are less than 4,000 yuan in Shenzhen.

The city is not the first to turn to a lottery to distribute the vaccine. Xiaoshan district of Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, also suffered from a supply shortage and in September carried out the same method.