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Sacramento County braces for flu-clinic crowds

Sacramento County's series of free public clinics to distribute the vaccine against the H1N1 flu starts next week, and on Friday public health officials were preparing for a tide of people seeking the nasal sprays and shots.

The county's public health department has scheduled more than 40 H1N1 vaccine clinics through mid-January. The county has received more than 36,000 vaccine doses and has distributed 22,000 to health care providers serving priority groups of residents. More than 100 health care providers in the county already have received the vaccine, public health officer Dr. Glennah Trochet said Friday.

Monday's clinic will be Sacramento County's first step to vaccinate the general public since the new flu emerged last spring.

Since then, 16 people countywide have died because of the H1N1 flu.

Nationwide, from April to October, around 3,900 people have died, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said this week. In that same period around 22 million people were infected with the H1N1 virus – about 7 percent of the population – and 100,000 were hospitalized.

Compared with the impact of seasonal flu viruses, the numbers aren't devastating – each year about 36,000 deaths are attributed to the flu. Between 5 and 20 percent of the population is normally infected each year.

But the CDC warned that H1N1 infections have occurred outside of the normal flu season, and the normally busy flu months are still ahead.

With that in mind, here are some things to remember if you plan to seek a vaccination Monday at Hiram Johnson High School, the site of the afternoon H1N1 clinic:

• For the first two weeks, the vaccine will only be for those in priority groups – principally pregnant women, children and caregivers for young children – and there's no priority within the priority groups. After Thanksgiving, all residents can seek vaccination.

• The Sacramento clinics are open only to Sacramento County residents. Residents of Yolo, El Dorado, Placer and surrounding counties must check with their doctors for vaccines, and with local public health officials for their clinic schedules.

• The department expects to administer 2,000 vaccinations in each of its four-hour clinics. If you arrive and there appear to be many more than 2,000 people waiting, think about coming back another day.

• You will be asked to fill out a consent form. To speed up the process, you may want to download it and fill it out ahead of time. The form can be found at http://www.sacpublic health.net/.

• The county currently has around 15,000 doses of the vaccine in the nasal spray and shot forms, enough for the first two weeks. If you are healthy, between 2 and 24 years old and within the priority groups, you will most likely get the nasal spray vaccine.

• If you have an underlying condition that puts you in a priority group, bringing documentation won't hurt. But the health officials won't ask for evidence of underlying conditions, unless they suspect fraud.

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