Pharmacies Run Out of Flu Vaccines for People Outside the Free Groups After Getting a Sixth of Last Year's Private Stock

Pharmacies in Portugal have run out of the flu vaccines sold to people who fall outside the free vaccination groups. Ema Paulino, president of the Associação Nacional das Farmácias (ANF, the National Association of Pharmacies), told Lusa on Monday that these doses "are no longer available in pharmacies", in an interview reported by Observador (in Portuguese).

Pharmacies received about 50,000 of them this year, she said, against about 300,000 in 2025. This is the so-called private contingent: vaccines that pharmacies buy directly from distributors for people who have a doctor's prescription but are not in one of the priority groups set by the Direção-Geral da Saúde (DGS, the Directorate-General for Health).

The free campaign is not affected

The shortage does not touch the free seasonal campaign, which began on 30 September and runs until 31 March. Paulino said pharmacies have vaccines for it, slightly more than last year. The Serviço Nacional de Saúde (SNS, the National Health Service) bought about 2.3 million standard-dose vaccines and 369,000 high-dose ones, and by the start of November more than 1.6 million people had been vaccinated against flu, about 810,000 of them at pharmacies.

The rules are in DGS Norma n.º 006/2026, announced on the government's website (in Portuguese) and explained here in September. The free jab covers, among others:

• everyone aged 60 or over;
• children from six months to four years old;
• pregnant women;
• people aged 5 to 59 with one of the risk conditions listed in the norm, such as chronic heart or lung disease, diabetes or a weakened immune system;
• residents of care homes and continuing-care units, people on home support, prisoners and homeless people, and several groups of health and care workers.

Adults aged 60 to 84 can get it free at a participating pharmacy with no prescription, and adults aged 18 to 59 with a risk condition can too once their eligibility is confirmed. People aged 85 and over and young children are vaccinated through the SNS.

Who is left without a jab

The private doses are meant for people whose doctor recommends vaccination although their condition is not on the DGS list, and for companies that vaccinate their staff to cut sick leave. Those are the people who now cannot find one.

One manufacturer has told the ANF that more doses for the private market may arrive at the end of this month or in early December, Paulino said, but "not in large quantity". She blamed an "international circumstance": the World Health Organization (WHO) set the strains for this season's vaccines late in the calendar, all three strains had to be updated at once, and manufacturers ran into production problems and served national campaigns first. "What was left went to the private contingent, but it was very little," she said.

The squeeze was flagged early. In September the DGS told Lusa it knew of constraints on supply to the private market, which it does not coordinate, and the ANF expected a smaller allocation than in past years.

What to do

• If you are in a free group, nothing changes: book at a participating pharmacy or your health centre. Take identification; if you are under 60 with a risk condition, the pharmacy must confirm your eligibility electronically or see a valid SNS message carrying your Número Nacional de Utente (SNS number).
• If you are not, ask your pharmacy to let you know if doses arrive in late November or December, and speak to your doctor about whether you might qualify under the DGS criteria.
• If your employer offered a workplace flu jab, check that the doses were secured before you count on it.

Take-up among older people is still uneven: a week ago only one in five over-60s in the Algarve had been vaccinated, half the rate in the north, after a fast start at pharmacies in October.