What is ACIP asking health care providers to do?
Two key principles underlie these recommendations. First, providers should conserve vaccine supply by decreasing the number of doses administered to healthy infants, rather than leaving some children in the group recommended for vaccine completely unprotected. Second, ACIP is asking all health care providers to make changes in their pneumococcal conjugate vaccine use and ordering practices, regardless of their current vaccine supply. This will assure that vaccine is available as widely as possible for all children. • Which children should receive the available doses? 1) High risk children less than 5 years of age should continue to be vaccinated as recommended by ACIP in October 2000.2) Healthy infants and children less than 24 months old should receive a decreased number of PCV-7 vaccine doses, based on the age at which vaccination is initiated and the providers estimate of vaccine supply in their practice. For infants, a schedule of 3 or 2 doses is recommended while supply is limited
