Government shutdown slows flu shot delivery for South Dakota prison inmates

The entrance to the South Dakota State Penitentiary’s East Hall. (Courtesy of South Dakota Department of Corrections)

Flu shots aren’t hard to come by in South Dakota in 2025.

Unless you’re in prison.

The South Dakota Department of Corrections has been rationing its supply of flu vaccines this month in response to a federal government shutdown-related shortage.

The department offers the vaccines at no cost to the 3,800 inmates scattered across the state’s six prison campuses. Last year, spokesman Michael Winder told South Dakota Searchlight, the department administered 1,225 flu shots.

At this point, he wrote in an email the department is “prioritizing high-risk offenders to receive the vaccines.”

Flu shots are not in short supply for the general public, according to spokespersons for Avera and Sanford Health, South Dakota’s two largest health care providers. But the department doesn’t get its shots through them.

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Instead, its supplies come from the federal Centers for Disease Control. The shots first come to the state Department of Health, which then distributes them to the Department of Corrections. As of Monday, Health Department spokeswoman Tia Kafka said, the state hadn’t received its entire correctional supply. 

The Health Department doesn’t distribute flu vaccines to any other state facilities, Kafka said. Just corrections.

“Some delays have occurred due to the federal government shutdown, and we are monitoring the situation closely,” Kafka wrote in an email. 

She said the department expects to get the rest of its correctional supply soon, but she didn’t know when.

Kafka’s department also distributes COVID boosters for inmates, which are supplied, like the flu shots, by the CDC. There isn’t a shortage there, though.

The Corrections Department has been impacted in at least one other way by the federal government shutdown, Winder wrote. Correctional officers are typically able to take a National Incident Management System training through the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those web-based courses are paused.