- Administering Vaccines
- Vaccine Administration Errors
We received a report of an infant who received rotavirus vaccine intramuscularly rather than orally. Is this dose valid? If not, when should it be repeated?
The rotavirus vaccine dose given by the intramuscular route is not valid and should be repeated by the oral route as soon as possible. In a review of this type of rotavirus vaccine administration error, there usually were not adverse reactions, and those documented were limited to local reactions and general, brief irritability. Please see www.cdc.gov/mmwr/pdf/wk/mm6304.pdf, page 81, for more information.
Please take steps to ensure that such vaccine administration errors are avoided in the future. This event should be reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System at https://vaers.hhs.gov even if an adverse reaction does not result from it.