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Parents wanting to get an H1N1 vaccine for their children are growing increasingly frustrated with the apparent lack of vaccine. The Springfield-Greene County Health Department is distributing vaccines to Cox and St. John’s hospitals.The health department says it sends out the vaccines with requirement thatthe hospitals distribute them to high risk groups, as defined by the Centersfor Disease Control. Butit's up to hospitals to decidewho within those high risk groups will receive the vaccines as they come in.KSMU’s Kristian Kriner reports.
As of now, the public health department itself is not administering the vaccine.
Health department officials say they’ve distributed at least 10,000 H1N1 vaccines to the two major hospitals, the Springfield Public School district and other healthcare facilities so far.
But the department’s spokesperson, Jaci McReynolds, says she doesn’t have a figure for how many vaccines have been sent specifically to Cox and St. John’s.
She added that the public health departmentprovides the vaccine with the understanding that the hospitals willadminister doses to high risk groups as defined by the Centers for Disease Control. The high risk groups are not prioritized by the CDC so hospitals decide how to distribute vaccines to those in high risk groups. McReynolds provides a break down of how many vaccines have gone to people in different age groups.
“There have been nearly 8,000 doses given out in our community: 13 to infants zero to two, 943 for children two to four years old, more than 2,000 to children five to 18, and then 651 for 19- 24, 3,000 in the age group of 25-49, 863 between the ages of 50 and 64 and 176 to senior adults,” McReynolds said.Those are numbers based on data that hospitals and other entities receiving the vaccine have reported back to the health department.
The CDC says priority, high risk individuals are: healthcare and emergency medical services staff, pregnant women and people between the ages of 6 months and 24 years.
Looking at the figures from the Springfield-Greene County Health Department, more doses have been given to people over the age of 25 than under it.
A possible explanation is that many health care workers are over the age of 25.
But this has led to many children being put on a waiting list for the vaccine, and it has left many parents worried.
Cora Scott, spokesperson for St. John’s, says St. John’s will not release how many vaccines the hospital has received.
She says some of those vaccines have gone to staff members, and others to high risk patients.
“These doses over the past few weeks have gone to pediatric offices and a little bit to OBGYN offices because some of them were specifically for pregnant women,” Scott said.
Stacy Fender, a spokesperson for CoxHealth, says Cox has received 1,500 doses and most of those vaccines have gone to hospital staff.“So far the main groups we have vaccinated in accordance with CDC guidelines are our emergency department, urgent care and pre-hospital staff. You have to keep the healthcare workers healthy so they can take care of the sick people. So that’s where most of those doses have gone. Some have gone out to physician offices,” Fender said.
She says Cox has also been giving some of its H1N1 vaccines to other high risk patients, but did not detail which age group.
Both Cox and St. John’s say there simply aren’t enough vaccines to go around for high-risk people right now.
For KSMU News, I’m Kristian Kriner.
