H1N1 vaccine saga continues in Duluth

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H1N1 vaccine saga continues in Duluth

By KBJR News 1

Posted by Boua Xiong

The H1N1 vaccine waiting game continues. The high demand and low supply even has some local health officials frustrated.

"Most providers have some vaccine but it's a very very small amount probably not even a tenth of what they anticipated getting," Guy Peterson, director of St. Louis County Public Health, said.

With the H1N1 vaccine not growing as quickly as demand is St. Louis County said its having to go back to the drawing board on some of its health plans.

Public health officials said they thought they'd be getting enough this month to deliver the vaccine to all school-aged kids in the county. But that's all changed.

"We had that all in place and just last week found out that we won't have sufficient vaccine to do that. Probably not until after Christmas even if we do," Peterson said.

Despite the setback others believe there is some good news when it comes to the biggest pandemic to hit since 1918.

"Our flu team met earlier today here at Saint Luke's. Our numbers in our urgent care, in our emergency department are a little bit better than what they were a week ago," Linda Van Etta, a physician with St. Luke’s Hospital said.

Dr. Linda Van Etta said the H1N1 flu is currently in its second wave and we may have already seen the worst of it.

"We're in our eighth week now of this wave and each wave in an influenza pandemic usually is in a region for somewhere for six to twelve weeks and so we feel like this probably has been the peak," Van Etta said.

Van Etta said sometimes a third wave is possible when it comes to pandemic flu. Whether or not that comes, and whether or not the vaccine will arrive before then is wait and see

Tuesday, Nov 3 at 3:57 PM Jim wrote ...

But they have enought to give it to the terrorists at GITMO, The pentigon confirmed that, after the white house denied it

Tuesday, Nov 3 at 11:38 AM Colin wrote ...

It's not the governments fault there isn't enough vaccine, it's the corporate suppliers that ran into complications when developing it.

Tuesday, Nov 3 at 10:43 AM tim wrote ...

people wanted change and they got it

Tuesday, Nov 3 at 10:22 AM Alyssa wrote ...

My child recently spent a week in the hospital for her critical anemia and her doctor ordered the vaccine. We were told it is not even available for critical pediatric patients in Duluth. If there are some, and it's not going to the sickest kids in our city, who IS getting it?!?!

Tuesday, Nov 3 at 9:26 AM bert wrote ...

take care of the good ole USA! somehow this seems very typical of our good ole goverment!

Tuesday, Nov 3 at 8:44 AM Jim wrote ...

Yet the the government is sending H1N1 Vaccines to other countries. I can't wait until they run all of our hosipitals! 'i'm sorry, the demand for doctors is larger than the supply, we will have some for you next month."

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