CHEYENNE (AP) - As Wyoming awaits the peak of its flu season, state health officials expect to know in a few days whether the state will receive additional flu vaccines.

The state has asked the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for an additional 7,000 doses.

This year's influenza outbreak in Wyoming started six-eight weeks early and there is no sign yet of the flu reaching its peak, according to the director of the University of Wyoming Student Health Service.

"At present, it looks as if we are in the midst of an outbreak with no estimation of when the incidence will peak," Joanne E. Steane, said in a release.

She says the best way to avoid the flu is getting a vaccine shot.

Vaccine makers produced 83 million doses this year, but the early and intense outbreak in the West has dried up supplies. Federal health officials are trying to redistribute what is left.

"No one has been negligent at the federal, state, county or manufacturing level," said Dr. Stan Hartman, deputy health officer for the Cheyenne-Laramie County Health Department.

"In past years, we've always had more vaccine and had to throw it out. Manufacturers made the amount they thought would be needed based on reasonable estimates."

Cheyenne-Laramie County health officials gave out 1,850 doses this year, compared with 1,040 in 2002, 781 in 2001 and 549 in 2000, said Connie Diaz Swearingen, director of public health nursing for Cheyenne and Laramie County.

Those numbers don't include vaccinations private physicians provide.

"There's an awareness because of the complications and early cases that created demand," she said.

The City-County Health Department has completely run out of vaccine except for 30 second-round doses to be given to children this week.

If the CDC grants the request, the state would set aside 5,000 doses for adults and 2,000 for children. Officials would likely distribute the vaccine to counties based on how prevalent the illness has been.

The CDC said flu is now widespread in at least 13 states, including Wyoming, and is everywhere except Massachusetts and Washington, D.C. Some experts predict this year's death toll easily could surpass the annual average of 36,000.

The number of flu cases in Wyoming is probably much higher than the 806 cases reported so far, said Dr. Brent Sherard, the state health officer.

Physicians likely are making many clinical diagnoses rather than bothering to test every patient with flu symptoms, he said.

Hartman said Laramie County, which has 351 reported cases, is probably seeing large numbers because of its proximity to Colorado, a hot spot for the disease.

This year's flu strain is A-Fujian-H3N2, part of a class of flu viruses that caused severe outbreaks in the United States in the 1990s.

"It tends to be somewhat more severe, and it can cause complications," Hartman said. "I don't think anyone had advance indication that this strain of A would hit so hard. They try to predict, but it's like the weather. You never really know until it gets here."

This year's flu shot was formulated to protect against three strains of the virus. Even though one of the three is a close cousin of this season's bug, whether that will be enough to help people ward off the flu is unknown. Some experts expect the level of protection to be less than 50 percent.

Even in the best years, the flu shot is not foolproof. Ordinarily it's 70 percent to 90 percent effective in healthy young adults and somewhat less so in the elderly.

The last time the vaccine missed the mark was in 1997, when a strain called A-Sydney appeared that was significantly different from the strain included in the flu shot.

Doctors are still uncertain about how much good the shot did that season, although the CDC estimates it was 30 percent to 50 percent protective.

Scientists say this year's mismatch does not seem to be as great as it was six years ago, but they cannot say with certainty how well the flu shot will work, or even whether it will.

"With a vaccine with a less optimal match, you have to say it might not work at all," said Dr. Scott Harper, a CDC epidemiologist. "That's very unlikely. Probably it will not be 90 percent effective. But we just have no good sense of how it will work in humans. Biology is messy."