If there’s another disease outbreak like last year’s swine flu epidemic, Snohomish County is ready to organize another round of mass vaccination clinics, health officials say.
“Absolutely we would do it again,” said Dr. Gary Goldbaum, health officer for the Snohomish Health District. “This community is well prepared to come together around a medical need like vaccinating a large proportion of the community quickly.”
During two one-day weekend events in October, nearly 26,000 children and adults were inoculated with swine flu vaccine.
Nearly 5,500 people were inoculated on Oct. 24, an event held to vaccinate pregnant women and children between the ages of 6 months and 4 years because they were more vulnerable to the virus.
On Halloween, more than 20,000 people were inoculated at 10 sites in Snohomish County. Although exact numbers are hard to pin down, it is thought to be one of larger one-day events in the nation last year.
Detroit had a similar event, with 23,000 doses of vaccine available at three sites in October, according to news accounts.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently estimated that 59 million people were sickened by swine flu and about 12,000 died. Most of the deaths were among people between the ages of 18 and 64.
The local vaccination clinics were organized through collaboration among the Snohomish Health District, the county’s emergency response system, medical clinics, local hospitals and the Tulalip Tribes.
Although there have been events in the past to inoculate the public, such as providing seasonal flu shots at the Everett Events Center, last year’s one-day clinics were the first time events of this scale were organized in Snohomish County, Goldbaum said.
It was a job too big for the health district to do alone, he said.
One organization, such as a medical group or a hospital, was responsible for organizing each vaccination site.
Goldbaum may be asked to present information on the clinics this fall at a national meeting of the American Public Health Association.
If he does speak at the event, he said he would outline things that other communities should avoid if they tried to organize similar clinics.
These include rudimentary steps such as ensuring there are adequate portable toilets at the mass vaccination clinics, Goldbaum said.
But they also include the need to have better screening methods to ensure that people who show up at these events are, in fact, the groups being targeted for vaccination, such as the pregnant women and children targeted in last fall’s swine flu campaign.
Dr. Yuan-Po Tu of The Everett Clinic, who worked with Goldbaum on the vaccination clinics, will provide information on the two mass vaccination events at a national meeting of American Thoracic Society in New Orleans in May.
Similar discussions with health care workers from across the nation will help prepare people for the next time a health emergency occurs and there’s little time to prepare, he said.
“We knew … everybody in Snohomish County would benefit if we all worked together,” Tu said.
The vaccination clinics were organized because health officials said they wanted to get the vaccine out as quickly as possible to as many people as possible to help slow the spread of the virus.
In one case, vaccine arrived on a Wednesday and clinics were ready to go just three days later on Saturday.
“This was the best training you could have,” Tu said. “It was not a drill. It was real.”
Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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