EVERETT — The first doses of nasal flu vaccine arrived in Snohomish County on Friday, and Dr. Julie Mattson couldn’t have been happier.
About 60 percent of the walk-in patients she saw this week at The Everett Clinic’s Silver Lake office had flu-like symptoms.
And at the organization’s Everett walk-in clinic on Friday, it was about a quarter of all patients.
Mattson, who was waiting to get her dose Friday afternoon, said she is relieved that the initial shipments of the swine flu vaccine have started to arrive.
“It seems like every patient we see has the classic flu symptoms,” she said.
Overall, some 7,200 doses of FluMist have been ordered for Snohomish County. They are reserved for doctors, nurses, and other medical group employees, as well as paramedics, firefighters and police officers.
Although some organizations, like The Everett Clinic, had just a few doses to administer to their staff members Friday, others, like Providence Regional Medical Center Everett, had far more for staff, about 2,000 doses.
Friday’s deliveries were just the first of tens of thousands of doses that will be coming to the county in the next few weeks. But they marked an important first step in battling influenza during a year when it has arrived far earlier than usual and is spreading quickly, said Dr. Gary Golbaum, health officer for the Snohomish Health District.
“It means our planning efforts are absolutely on target,” he said. “We’re prepared.”
The public will get its first chance to get the vaccine on Halloween, Oct. 31 at planned mass vaccination clinics at about nine sites throughout the county — the first step in the goal of getting 100,000 children and adults vaccinated against swine flu before Thanksgiving.
The shot will be free, but groups of people that have become the sickest from swine flu been given priority for getting the shot first.
They are: pregnant women, people who have contact with infants under 6 months, people 6 months to 24 years old, people 25 to 64 years old with chronic health conditions, schoolteachers and child-care workers, health care and emergency services personnel.
The vaccine is not recommended for seniors because they have not been as hard-hit by the virus as pregnant women and those 24 and younger.
Goldbaum said he hoped people would not be lulled into thinking that swine flu is just like any other flu.
“This year, it’s a younger population that are getting very ill,” he said.
In fact, 76 children have died from the H1N1 virus so far this year, officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.
“To put that in context, the past three years, the total pediatric influenza deaths ranged from 46 to 88,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, the director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
“And it’s only the beginning of October. Of course, the flu season often will last all of the way until May,” she said.
Having large numbers of people get the shot is the best way to help protect those particularly vulnerable to swine flu, Goldbaum said, such as pregnant women and children.
“The disease spreads extremely quickly among kids,” he said.
Four schools in Snohomish County were reporting absenteeism of greater than 10 percent last week, according to the health district. No figures are available on how many of these children may have swine flu.
Although some polls have shown that parents have concerns about having their kids get what they consider a “new” vaccine, both Goldbaum and federal health officials continue to emphasize that the shot is made the same way as the millions of flu shots produced in other years.
“Every year we produce a new influenza vaccine,” Goldbaum said, because each year they contain protection against the different strains of influenza that are circulating.
If manufacturers had been able to produce the swine flu vaccine faster, it probably would have been included in this year’s seasonal flu shot, he said.
Instead, it had to be produced as a separate shot.
Although the shot is being targeted at high-risk groups initially, Goldbaum said he thinks that eventually, perhaps by December, everyone who wants the shot will be able to get it.
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