Software glitch hampers child flu vaccine records

SEVERE reactions to this year’s seasonal flu vaccination appear to occur in children naïve to flu vaccine and in those younger than three, rather than the entire under-five cohort as initially suspected.

But establishing a precise denominator for this year’s vaccinated cohort has been fraught with difficulty because a software glitch has prevented optimum recording of doses on the Australian Childhood Immunisation Register (ACIR).  

Perth paediatric immunologist Associate Professor Peter Richmond said the affected children were mostly younger than three years. “It seems to have affected more children who are getting vaccine for the first time – the data we’ve got from Princess Margaret Hospital would suggest that,” he said.

Investigations are continuing in WA and across Australia to establish the rate of adverse events associated with this year’s paediatric trivalent vaccine following reports of 400 cases of fever and 77 convulsions in five states. Those reports led the Chief Medical Officer to suspend flu vaccination in all children younger than five years.

Associate Professor Richmond, a consultant at the hospital and head of the WA influenza vaccine trial, said the adverse events this year appeared excessive compared to last year when 60,000 children – around half of the eligible cohort – received free influenza vaccine funded by the West Australian Government.

Professor Terry Nolan, the chair of the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation, said while WA GPs last year had been required toprovide a manual line listing of paediatric flu vaccinations, this year the State Government decided to rely on the ACIR. 

However, a software problem with at least one major product had prevented GPs from uploading the data, he said, arguing it was vital to obtain baseline numbers of vaccinated children to accurately determine the rate of adverse events. 

A spokesperson for Medicare Australia, which administers ACIR, said they were aware that software had affected the transmission of data from some practices, and were advising all providers to review products.

A spokeswoman for WA Health said they had written to the state’s GPs asking them to fill in a form listing paediatric flu vaccinations.

Professor Richmond said research was now underway to test components of this year’s vaccine against previous years’ cocktail of strains.

“The original whole flu virus seemed to be associated with more fevers, but now the virus gets split. So that will be something people will be looking at – is there more or less flu virus in this year’s vaccine which could be causing problems.”

However, some children who presented at hospital with high fever had gone on to have a second dose of vaccine without incident, he said.