Swine flu vaccine available Monday

By Cassandra Mickens (Contact) | The Natchez Democrat

Published Saturday, October 31, 2009

NATCHEZ — The Mississippi State Department of Health announced Friday the swine flu vaccine will be available at all county health departments Monday. Just how many doses will be allotted to Adams County remains to be answered.

MSDH State Epidemiologist Dr. Mary Currier said Mississippi has been allotted 223,800 doses of the swine flu vaccine. Exactly 146,000 of those doses are injectable, while the remaining doses are in nasal spray form. The vaccine is free.

Currier said pregnant women, children age 6 months to 4 years and caregivers of young children are at high risk of contracting the swine flu virus and should be vaccinated immediately.

“Every health department clinic will have it on Monday,” Currier said during a press conference in Jackson. “We will make sure they have it Monday if we have to get in a truck and take it ourselves.”

Currier said high risk individuals are top priority vaccine recipients, and others who request the vaccine might be asked to wait for future shipments to be delivered.

Currier said the vaccine is housed at a distribution site in Memphis, Tenn., and a majority of the doses have been distributed among public medical providers, particularly pediatricians and gynecologists. However, shipments to public providers are coming in at a snail’s pace.

“There are 1,000 providers who want the vaccine and we’re still not close to finishing those orders,” Currier said. “Anybody who has signed up to be provider of the vaccine will eventually get it.”

Approximately 28,000 doses will be distributed among county health departments.

“It’s not a whole lot for the whole state,” Currier said of the doses.

“We hope to get many more doses. We don’t know what our full allocation will be.”

Because Mississippi represents 1 percent of the nation’s population, the state will receive 1 percent of swine flu vaccine doses distributed nationwide, Currier said.

In addition to providing vaccines to county health departments and private practices, MSDH is working to coordinate school vaccinations statewide.

For those who might be refused the swine flu vaccine until a later date, Currier suggests they practice good hand washing and to sneeze and cough in their sleeve.

While sneezing or coughing into the sleeve is not a laundrist’s dream, doing so keeps germs from spreading, Currier said.

There are currently 1,208 confirmed cases of swine flu in Mississippi, and 15 people have died as a result of the virus.