City, Spotsylvania flu-shot clinics canceled

The flu shot clinics scheduled for tomorrow night in Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania County have been canceled.

Dr. John Petrasky, director of the Rappahannock Area Health District, said this afternoon that he told the two school systems that the Health Department has run out of H1N1 vaccine and will not be able to supply them with vaccine for the start of their inoculation programs.

Clinics scheduled for 5 p.m. tonight at Stafford High and tomorrow at Colonial Forge High in Stafford County will be held, Petrasky said. The Colonial Forge clinic will use vaccine given to the schools from a shipment received by Stafford County Fire and Rescue.

Local schools are the Health Department’s top priority, he said, and will be able to resume their clinics as soon as more vaccine arrives. He said he did not know when that would happen.

Permalink: http://news.fredericksburg.com/rapidassessment/2009/10/21/city-spotsylvania-flushot-clinics-canceled/

Metsball69

Innoculate only Stafford county students. Maybe they should’ve done a better job planning.
local_boy

The lack of planning was not in Stafford. It seems the powers to be South of the Rappahanock are the ones lacking.
FREDGATOR

It was not a planning issue. There is simply not enough to go around. What concerns me is that the Rappahannock Regional Health Director has chosen to go ahead with the STAFFORD clinic instead of at least letting some of the Spotsy/Fred kids have the shot! It is poor leadership.
Metsball69

That’s who I’m talking about. They probably should’ve innoculated elementary school students first in both counties. Reports as of last week were showing that the H1N1 vaccine was running in short supply. They RHD should’ve done a count and determined if they had enough to provide to students of the two counties and city before they began innoculating. BTW, I have high school aged kids.
WineLover

Children are the most vulnerable population, this is a situation with potentially serious consequences for all.
travelin_bone

The H1N1 vaccination shortages are NATIONWIDE. It wasn’t a lack of planning, there just isn’t enough supply to go around. We’re no more important than any other community where people lined up and got turned away when supply ran out.
tpifos

Imagine what you would do if you were trying to get
treatment for cancer or heart disease or some other
serious problem?
Metsball69

Don’t spin this as such. The issue is that the private run vaccine makers haven’t produced enough.
GaryShorts

Actually this is a supply problem since the vaccine has only just been approved safe. I expect once production peeks the supply problem will go away.

Even in a health system where the government is not involved at all, such as not testing and approving the vaccine, there would still be a supply problem.

Furthermore, if 300 millions Americans all of a sudden came down with cancer and heart disease all at once then I doubt that the private healthcare systems could handle that sort of crisis. This is because of the probability and numbers point. Thus comparison of a H1N1 vaccine to cancer and heart disease is incomparable.
jlwillard1

Back to the question of why only Stafford. From the little bit of info in the blog, it almost seems as if Stafford looked to get vaccines outside of RAHD sources – hence continuing with distribution there while Fburg and Spotsy are on hold. Just being curious; does anybody know??

Copyright 2013, The Free Lance-Star Publishing Co. of Fredericksburg, VA, USA
Permissions - Privacy Policy - Send email to Support Staff - Send email to the News Team
To contact all other newspaper departments, please click here or call 540-374-5000.
If you have commercial printing or offset printing needs in Virginia or anywhere on the East Coast, visit our printing company, Print Innovators.
To contact the Free Lance–Star please use the following numbers:
Main Switchboard: 540-374-5000, Advertising: 540-374-5460, Classifieds: 540-374-5001, Subscriber Services: 540-374-5002, Toll-free: 800-877-0500

Archives

Tags

City, Spotsylvania flu-shot clinics canceled