Students who were planning to get an influenza vaccine this semester at the Student Health Care Center will have to go elsewhere.
The SHCC ran out of flu shots on Jan. 4 and will not be ordering more.
Catherine Seemann, marketing coordinator for the SHCC, said the center has decided not to reorder the vaccines because in past years students did not take advantage of the free flu shots.
Most of the vaccines are administered between October and November.
If SHCC ordered more shots and students did not take advantage of them, the extra vaccines would be a waste of funding, Seemann said.
"The last thing we want to do is order something and not be able to use it," she said.
For the 2010-11 school year, SHCC ordered 10,000 shots but only 7,000 were administered.
In August, SHCC ordered 5,000 flu shots and all of them were used.
During the fall semester, the vaccine company Sanofi Pasteur gave UF 1,000 intradermal vaccines, which also protect against influenza but are injected under the skin instead of into the muscle. All the intradermal vaccines were distributed.
Nursing specialists Kelly Mitchell and Diane Pecora and Dr. Phillip Barkley, director of UF Clinical Services, made the final decision to not order more vaccines.
"There are just not enough students demanding them," Barkley said. "If we could get 40,000 students to get the vaccine, I would find a way to make that happen," he said.
Portuguese junior Tiffany Fuentes, 21, disagreed with SHCC's decision.
"Being the Student Health Care Center, they should always have them available for students," she said. "It shuts down the opportunity for students to receive the flu shots."
According to the Florida Department of Health's Flu Review for the 2011-12 season , flu levels are increasing around Florida.
Although the shots aren't available on campus anymore, Seemann still encourages students to go elsewhere to be vaccinated.
Drugstores such as Walgreens and CVS offer flu shots, and most insurance companies cover the entire cost of the vaccine, Seemann said.
