Mass H1N1 clinic being considered

A local committee is considering staging a mass H1N1 flu vaccination clinic Monday at the Corn Palace.

The Point of Delivery committee will meet at 2:30 p.m. today at City Hall to discuss the issue, said Mark Schilling, a committee member and director of the Corn Palace. He said the clinic could help stave off an anticipated “third phase” of H1N1 flu cases early next year.

“We’re really trying to hit this before phase three comes,” Schilling said. “There are many different guesses of when that will be — late January or February, that time period, is kind of the best guess at this point.”

The POD committee had originally planned a mass vaccination clinic last week at the Corn Palace, but that was canceled when it appeared there would be a shortage of vaccines. The committee then planned to release vaccines to local schools as supplies came in, but that plan also has been nixed.

Schilling said the tentatively scheduled Monday clinic will likely have fewer than the 3,000 doses of vaccine that the committee originally hoped for. Only H1N1 vaccine, and not the seasonal flu vaccine, is expected to be available. The clinic would be free and open to everyone in the first and second vaccination target groups.

According to the state Department of Health, those first and second target groups include pregnant women, people who live with or care for infants younger than six months, people aged six months through 24 years, health-care and emergency medical services workers, and adults 25-64 with chronic health conditions (asthma, diabetes, neuromuscular diseases, renal disease or cardiovascular disease).

The Department of Health opened vaccine availability to the second target group Monday. The department said Friday in a news release that it had distributed 76,000 total doses of H1N1 vaccine this year to about 400 locations in South Dakota, and department officials felt it was time to make the vaccine available to more people. About 2,400 doses of the H1N1 vaccine have been shipped to health-care providers in Davison County.

Jim Buechler, owner of The Medicine Shoppe in Mitchell, said Monday that many local people in the first target group have not been vaccinated. He thinks the state should have directed more vaccine to Mitchell earlier.

“I think we could’ve avoided a lot of cases of H1N1 if we’d had the vaccine sooner,” Buechler said.

As of Oct. 31, there had been 44 confirmed cases of influenza this year in Davison County — the seventh highest total among the state’s 66 counties — and eight hospitalizations. Most of the influenza was of the H1N1 variety.

Barb Buhler, of the state Department of Health, said officials are doing their best to spread vaccines statewide. Manufacturing delays have slowed the distribution of vaccines nationally, and only about a third of adults who have tried to get an H1N1 vaccine have been able to get it, according to a national poll released Friday.

“We would all like to have more vaccine,” Buhler said. “We were trying to get it out to that first tier of folks, and we’ve got a fair amount out there now. And these other folks who are in the second tier are also at high risk, and it’s important that we start making it available to them, as well.”

Connie Fergen, a Davison County health nurse, said Monday that there is vaccine available at some local medical clinics. She suggests people start with a call to their doctor; if no vaccine is available there, the county health office is a second option.

Fergen feels good about the local level of H1N1 inoculation that has been achieved so far.

“We’re definitely using our supply,” she said, “and I think other clinics have, too.”

Tags: news, local, h1n1