Now, he said, health officials have "some of this in hand to make the vaccine supply go considerably farther."

He said 35,000 to 40,000 Americans die of the flu each year, even with adequate vaccine supplies.

Worse yet, there are fears that vaccine supplies may run out in some areas.

"We're going to take a look at current vaccine supplies, and assess whether we can relax our age guidelines," he said.

As a result, the United States currently has the safest, most effective vaccine supply in history.

But the expanded recommendation applies only to people in areas where the vaccine supply is adequate to meet the demand.

It's very dangerous to store so much of our nation's vaccine supply in one facility.

"Some states have plans in place to redistribute vaccine supplies should that be needed."

In recent years there have been many significant disruptions of vaccine supplies.

The Shiva virus and the vaccine supplies would be burned in a matter of hours, leaving no physical evidence at all.