Hundreds line up for local H1N1 vaccinations

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Randy Sisson of Sandwich reacts after receiving an H1N1 shot at the DeKalb County Health Department on Sunday, November 1, 2009 in Dekalb. (Marcelle Bright – For the Chronicle)

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DeKALB – People parked as far as a half-mile away, then walked, armed with camp chairs and blankets, to stand in line by the hundreds. One family even camped out overnight to be first in line.

It wasn’t concert tickets or a new game system they were lining up for. It was a flu shot.

Specifically, it was DeKalb County’s first vaccination clinic against the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu.

 The doors opened at 9 a.m. Sunday, but many arrived much earlier, fearing a shortage of the vaccine.

“I got here at 5:45, but I was not the first,” laughed Angie Roberts of Sycamore. “I didn’t want to end up at the back of the line.”

Last summer, the government was hoping to have more than 100 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine ready by mid-October. But unexpected production delays have meant that only about 25 million doses have actually been produced nationwide.

The county health department received 3,000 doses of vaccine and gave 2,300 doses at Sunday’s clinic, health department administrator Karen Grush said.

The remaining doses have been distributed to providers throughout the county.

“We’ve done all the first responders in the county,” she said. “The hospital and health care providers had not gotten their vaccine by last week, so we got out to all the larger health care providers in the county to vaccinate their front-line staff: the doctors and nurses and people who see patients coming in. We also gave vaccine to the obstetricians in DeKalb so they could give it to the pregnant women who are their patients.”

Robert and Brandy Pfeifer passed their time in line playing with their children, Roman, 4, and Brooke, 2. Robert had arrived about 6:30 a.m. and held a place in line for Brandy and the kids, who joined him about an hour later.

“It’s what we were expecting,” he said of the crowd.

Brandy said she wanted to get the whole family vaccinated after a friend’s family contracted the virus.

“She said it was horrible. Just awful,” she said. “After that I said, ‘OK, we’ll stand in line.’”

Brock Sisson, 6, of Sandwich has asthma, which puts him into a higher-risk group for the respiratory illness, his mother, Tracy, said. To make sure they would be the first in line to get the vaccination, the Sissons arrived at the health department at 9 p.m. Saturday night and slept in their car, they said.

“I didn’t want to end up back there,” Brock’s father, Randy Sisson, said as he gestured toward the back of the line, which wound out of sight.

The clinic ran until 3 p.m., but the long line had abated by about 11 a.m., Grush said. By early afternoon, people could walk in without waiting outside. The DeKalb Fire Department, DeKalb Police Department and DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office were on hand to help keep traffic moving smoothly.

To reassure people waiting in the early morning line and to help staff keep track of the amount of vaccine available, workers walked along the line distributing tickets, so people knew there would still be vaccine left when they reached the door. Once inside, they were moved fairly rapidly through a paperwork station and several checkpoints to make sure they had no history of adverse reactions to the flu shot. There was a room to remove coats, then children went to a room with eight nurses delivering vaccine while adults went to an adjoining room with six nurses.

Because children seem to be at a higher risk for H1N1, the health department’s original plan was to take the vaccine to each of the county’s school districts and hold clinics, Grush said. Last week, the department learned it would not get enough vaccine early enough for that plan. Rather than wait, the department put the school plan on hold and held Sunday’s clinic to get the vaccine to as many people in target populations as possible, she said.

“At the beginning of the week, we really thought the health care providers would have received it, but they hadn’t, so we redesigned the plan again,” she said. “These health care providers have people with flu symptoms coming in, and they need to be protected as well.”

Grush said another clinic will be held as soon as the county receives another shipment of vaccine. It expects the shipment this week, she said, but the shipments have been notoriously late, so no date will be set until the vaccine has arrived.

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