Oregon Public Broadcasting

State officials are trying to contact 22,000 Oregonians to tell them that they need to be revaccinated. Krisitan Foden-Vencil reports.

During a routine investigation, health workers found that fridges in three private clinics were either too warm or too cold for the storage of vaccines.

In other cases, the fridges were fine, but record keeping was either inadequate or non-existant. 

Jim Sellers, with the Oregon Department of Human Services, says the effectiveness of the vaccines might have been compromised but patients needn’t worry.

Jim Sellers: “This not a public health emergency. Although we are encouraging people to go back to the clinics and receive the new vaccination, that the clinic will do for free, as soon as they can.”

The biggest hit population is children, who were supposed to have been inoculated against diseases like tetanus, diphtheria, and measles. But because clinics store vaccines in a single place, some adult vaccines also may have been affected.