SANTA CLARA — Elizabeth Maulick thought her 19-year-old son, Gregory, was up-to-date with all his shots — including meningitis — before he started at Santa Clara University in September.
But like thousands of other SCU parents, Maulick was furious to discover this week that the regimen didn’t include the shot for the strain of the potentially deadly infection that has so far infected three students at the university and forced thousands more to wait hours for emergency vaccines.
“It freaks me out — it’s very scary,” said Maulick, a real estate agent in Palo Alto. “And if, in fact, a vaccine could help, why didn’t I know about it?”
One reason is that — despite the severe health risks of the contagious disease — health officials say the public health threat isn’t high enough to justify the new vaccine’s widespread use.
Approved for use in the U.S. in late 2014, the so-called MenB vaccine — named for the B group strain of the infection — has only received a “permissive” recommendation from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issues annual guidance on vaccines.
That means it is up to doctors to talk about the vaccine with patients and their parents, but it isn’t routinely administered along with the standard meningitis shot, which covers four other strains of the disease. Kaiser Permanente and other health care providers recommend bringing it up with your doctor.
Right now, a universal recommendation for the group B strain is “not a slam dunk,” said Dr. Dawn Nolt, a pediatrician and member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases. That’s because it’s a relatively new vaccine in this country, it’s expensive and it doesn’t last forever — protection begins to drop off after a few years, Nolt said.
Just this week, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced its annual immunization schedule for 2016, to follow the CDC’s recommendations for adolescents, ages 16-18.
“It’s a good vaccine,” Nolt said, but “it’s not as good as perhaps we’d like it to be. We’d use it in very particular situations,” such as an outbreak like the one at Santa Clara University.
The scare at SCU this week is only the latest example of the potentially deadly infection known to surface on college campuses and military bases — or anywhere where people are living and socializing in close quarters.
Since Sunday, three SCU students have been diagnosed with a meningitis-carrying bacteria. Two remain hospitalized with meningococcal meningitis, while a third who had a bloodstream-related infection with the same bacteria has been discharged.
No new cases were reported by Santa Clara County Public Health officials on Friday.
Dr. Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious disease at UC Davis School of Medicine, said the question over whether to standardize the MenB vaccine led to heated discussions within the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.
Those against widespread use cite a low number of meningococcal infections in the U.S., he said, “even in the relatively high-risk groups like college students.”
Others say the vaccines are expensive and clumsy to administer, requiring multiple doses spread over a month.
Santa Clara University students who lined up by the hundreds on campus to get a free MenB shot on Thursday and Friday will have to return in 30 days for the second dose.
Still, the permissive recommendation designation means that most insurance companies will pay for it, he said.
But what Blumberg calls “the cold statistics” is only one side of the debate.
The other, he said, is the impact of the bacterial meningitis on its victims, which the CDC says afflicts about 50 to 60 adolescents each year, killing 10-15 percent of them even after appropriate antibiotic treatment.
An additional 10-20 percent will be left with injuries that affect their quality of life — from the loss of a limb, kidney and brain damage, among other possible consequences.
“How you do you put a cost on that?” Blumberg asked.
Lynn Bozoff, a mother who lost her 20-year-old son to meningitis in 1998, said you don’t.
“As a parent, you don’t care what those numbers are,” said Bozoff, a co-founder of the National Meningitis Association. “If it’s your child, you want your child protected. How is a parent going to feel who has a child that comes down with serogroup B meningitis and then finds out there was a serogroup vaccine available?”
Bozoff and her group have been pushing since 2002 for broader recommendations of the vaccines.
In California, laws on student immunization requirements typically apply to child care facilities and K-12 schools rather than to college and universities.
But state law requires those colleges and universities to provide information about meningococcal disease and vaccine to incoming freshmen who will be residing in on-campus housing.
Dr. Ross DeHovitz, a pediatrician at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation and chairman of its immunization committee, said because the incidence of serogroup B meningitis is so low and because the vaccine is new, issuing a permissive recommendation “was an important first step.”
The recommendation, he said, lets people know that the vaccine exists, and that, for some people, it’s an important precaution to take.
Plenty of students were taking that to heart at Santa Clara University on Friday, the second day of free vaccinations to all undergraduates. More than 4,000 students received shots this week.
Nikita Bhatnagar, a 21-year-old junior from Cupertino, was frustrated by the long line.
“I feel like there could have been a better way to organize this,” she said, perhaps by offering multiple locations to get the vaccine. After a two-hour wait on Friday morning, she abandoned her spot in line to take a midterm exam.
“I didn’t get to the front,” she said, “not even close to it.”
Santa Clara University will extend its free vaccine clinic to Saturday from 2-6 p.m. at Kennedy Commons and on Monday from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. at Locatelli Student Activity Center.
Contact Tracy Seipel at tseipel@mercurynews.com. Contact Emily Benson at ebenson@mercurynews.com.
THE DIFFERENT vaccines
The standard meningococcal vaccine protects against four kinds, or serogroups, of the diseases, and has been available in the U.S. for about a decade. A booster dose is currently recommended nationwide for all adolescents at age 16 years. Some, but not all, California colleges and universities require their students to receive the booster dose.
Many recent cases on college campuses have been diagnosed as serogroup B meningococcal (MenB) disease. MenB vaccines are newer, and have only been licensed in the U.S. since late 2014. National recommendations state that MenB vaccines may be administered to adolescents and young adults ages 16″“23 years.
