With pregnant women and those with underlying health conditions unable to take the FluMist nasal spray, Reed has focused on schoolchildren, caretakers for infants who cannot be vaccinated, and health workers. That means sending vaccine to hospitals, doctors' offices and local health departments.
The health departments will decide how to dispense their doses. Most plan to hold large school clinics when they get more vaccine. For now, they plan smaller clinics for other vulnerable groups such as homeless children.
Each office set to get vaccines got highlighted with that blue pen, a labor-intensive process that Reed said ensured that the doses were going to the right places first.
Before the highlighting began, decision-makers met in a conference room to figure out how many people might want vaccine, how many were in target groups and where they lived.
State epidemiologist Dr. David Blythe and John P. Krick, director of the state Office of Epidemiology, met with Reed on Monday afternoon to talk about the numbers. They know about 5.5 million people are recommended to get the vaccine in the state, with 2.9 million in high-priority groups. Less than a third of the population and only about 40 percent of health care workers typically get the seasonal flu vaccine, though officials believe that heavy publicity surrounding deaths of children, who are disproportionately affected by swine flu, probably will lead more people to seek protection from both viruses.
The CDC estimates that 3.4 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine will be used in Maryland by the first week in January, Reed said.
There have been outbreaks in every state in the nation. A private school in Laurel, St. Vincent Pallotti High School, plans to close today so a cleaning company can disinfect after five students came down with flu, according to a note on the school Web site from Principal Stephen J. Edmonds. Doctors are not testing for the H1N1 virus, and it had not been determined whether the cases are swine flu or seasonal flu.
Nationwide, there have been limited reports of shortages of the antiviral Tamiflu in liquid form used by children. And there have been reports of clinics running out of vaccine for seasonal flu, of which there has not yet been an outbreak.
That is not the reason the state requested that schools suspend their seasonal flu clinics. Seasonal and H1N1 nasal spray vaccines cannot be given within four weeks of each other, and the state wanted localities to be ready to administer swine flu vaccine as soon as it is available because there is a more pressing need.
