By Brian Bethel
The Abilene Reporter-News
ABILENE, Texas — Want to be protected against the swine flu — and the regular flu, for that matter — this fall?
Be prepared to roll up those sleeves. A lot.
Some people may need as many as four injections to get full protection, said Dr. Zane Travis of the Abilene-Taylor County Public Health District. Vaccination against the headline-grabbing swine flu strain will require two shots about five weeks apart, he said.
And people will need a regular yearly flu shot to protect themselves completely, he said. Two of the regular flu shots are recommended for anyone who hasn’t had one recently, Travis said.
“So we’re going to ask people to take three shots this year — four shots if they haven’t had the ordinary flu shot recently,” he said Thursday.
The city’s first clinic for the “standard” flu should be sometime in mid-September, Travis said.
A typical flu shot protects against several strains of the virus, based on researchers’ best guesses concerning which strains will be most prevalent.
The swine flu causing concern is a strain of the fairly common H1N1 flu virus.
“There is an H1N1 component of the normal flu vaccine, but it is not the H1N1 strain that causes swine flu,” Travis said.
Thus, the shots will offer little or no cross-protection, which is why “people need both,” he said.
Though swine flu has been grabbing headlines since spring, the regular seasonal flu shouldn’t be ignored, Travis said.
“The ordinary flu has killed more people than the swine flu,” he said.
Abilene should get its dosages of the swine flu vaccine in mid-October, later than what the city was hoping for, Travis said.
He anticipated 200,000 doses would ultimately be available, though not all at once.
“There will be enough for everyone, we’ve been assured, at least eventually,” he said. “The high-risk and high-exposure people will be protected first.”
Thus the first swine flu clinics will target young people, first responders, and the chronically ill, all identified as those potentially highly susceptible to the H1N1 strain.
“It reverses somewhat the usual order of things,” Travis said. The regular flu shot emphasizes older people as a target group, he said.
The exact sequence of clinics has not yet been determined, Travis said, but he expected that more room would be needed compared to last year because of publicity given to the injections. Travis said he thought it was likely that the clinics would be at the Abilene Civic Center this year, though that remains to be decided.
Travis said volunteers would be needed to help as final dates for the clinics are firmed up.
“People have been very generous with their time and talents in the past,” he said.
Travis said the health department was slated to receive the swine flu vaccine, as well as needles and other equipment, at no cost. An as-yet undetermined administrative cost will probably need to be charged to cover labor, he said.
The standard vaccinations should be available in a manner similar to previous years. Last year, the city offered the vaccine for $15.
Production of the flu vaccine is straggling. The newest calculations show the nation won’t have the long-promised 120 million doses ready to dispense by Oct. 15, with about 45 million doses being available by then.
But the dragging dosages appear to be more of a delay than a shortage - about 20 million doses are expected to be shipped every week, according to the latest estimates by the Department of Health and Human Services.
There should be 85 million doses on hand by October’s end, and the full 195 million the government has ordered by December, the long-set date for final delivery.
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