Ventura County officials are scrambling to contact thousands of patients who received vaccines that may have been ineffective because county workers stored them at the wrong temperature.
Approximately 23,000 patients who got shots at county clinics between October 2017 and November 2018 need to be revaccinated, county officials said. But so far, fewer than 5% of those affected have returned to get their shots, raising questions about how protected residents will be from this year’s flu season as well as other disease outbreaks.
In October 2017, Ventura County officials changed a packaging process to ensure that vaccines traveling from agency headquarters in Ventura to clinics as far away as Simi Valley would not become dangerously warm.
Most vaccines need to be stored at 35 to 46 degrees Fahrenheit, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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