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Posted: Friday, 30 October 2009 12:41PM
Cook County to offer H1N1 vaccinations
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CHICAGO (WBBM/AP) -- The Lake County health department has cancelled its weekend H1N1 vaccination clinics after all of their available doses were allocated today. More from WBBM’s suburban bureau chief Julie Mann.
Lake County Health Department spokesman Leslie Piotrowski (pee-O-trow-ski) says wristbands were given out to the people standing in lines at the five clinics sites and once the amount of vaccine was allotted, people without a wristband were turned away.
She says weekend clinics have been cancelled in Lake County. She says the Health Department wanted to get its supply out as fast as possible to the people who needed it, knowing there as only a fraction of the 100-thosaund doses of the HINI vaccine the department initially ordered. Still thousand of people were vaccinated. In a two day period the health department expected to vaccinate more than 10-thousand people.
She says over 400 providers in Lake County are licensed to dispense the vaccine and will begin offering it once a larger supply is made available. The health department will announce future clinics once they receive another batch of doses, but she couldn’t say when that would be.
The appointment-only clinics start Monday for pregnant women, those 6 months to 24 years of age, adults with certain health conditions and others who are at most risk.
The county also plans to vaccinate students at school-based clinics and licensed daycare centers.
14,000 doses are being delivered to schools in Palatine. Next on the schedule: children in Cicero.
Lake County has five clinics scheduled today "while supplies last." Thursday’s clinics used up their supply of the H1N1 vaccine hours before the clinics were scheduled to close.
Will County is set to vaccinate children ages two months to 24 years at a location in Bolingbrook today. This is the third Will County clinic this week.
In Dupage County, the health department has received another shipment of the vaccine. Six-thousand doses of the nasal mist will be dispensed by appointment only.
Because of limited supplies, the Kane County health department cancelled its upcoming clinics and is now taking appointments for high risk individuals.
The city of Chicago has scheduled another walk in vaccination clinic at the city colleges tomorrow (Saturday).
Nationwide, public health and health care providers have received only 25 percent of their original order expected at this time and they are struggling to meet public needs.
More lines can be expected, especially in the city, where flu vaccination clinics are being set up.
At the same time, Swiss drugmaker Novartis AG said Thursday it is on track to meet its U.S. government order for swine flu vaccine, seeking to calm fears in recent weeks that shipments and vaccination programs may be delayed.
The Basel-based company said it already has delivered more than 7.5 million doses of vaccine for the A(H1N1) flu that the World Health Organization vaccines declared a pandemic in June.
Novartis said it expects to send 25-30 million doses to the United States by the end of November.
``If you look at the U.S. market, there's been a lot of confusion around about how much was to be delivered by when,'' said spokesman Eric Althoff. ``In fact, we're exactly where we told the government we would be.''
U.S. authorities said earlier this month they had received only about 23 million of the predicted 45 million vaccine doses from Novartis and other vaccine makers by mid-October. The delay has caused many U.S. states to postpone mass vaccinations, and worried patients have bombarded doctors with calls asking when a shot would be available.
``It's made a lot of headlines in the U.S.,'' said Althoff. ``Every contract takes into account that you're making a commitment with many unknown variants, and one of the variants was the yield, which then delays the amount of vaccine available at one given time.''
In fact, the amount of seed virus Novartis was able to produce was initially far below expectations, though the yield has since been increased, said Althoff.
``The (U.S.) government has always been updated on this progress,'' he said.
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Contents of this site are Copyright 2009 by WBBM. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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