The Wood County Health Department immunized 984 people with the H1N1 flu mist Thursday.
Unlike the first public H1N1 clinic held on Monday when people waited up to four hours for the vaccine,
the average wait at Thursday’s clinic was 35 minutes, according to Pat Snyder, public information
officer for the health department.
To speed up the process, the health department changed the flow of the clinic and added vaccinators, so
up to 10 people were administering the mist. And since the health department had none of the injectable
vaccine to give, the process went faster since children are usually less resistant to get the nasal
mist, Snyder said.
The health department now has about 1,000 doses of the flu mist still available. Officials have not been
told when any more injectable vaccine will be delivered to the county.
"I don’t think it’s going to come until Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday," Snyder said.
The next public H1N1 clinic is tentatively scheduled for Oct. 31, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., again at the
Huntington Bank Building in the Bowling Green State University research park off Dunbridge Road.
Little testing is done to verify H1N1, because it is presumed that more than 95 percent of the flu in the
region is H1N1. In many cases, testing is done only if a patient is hospitalized, so the strain can be
examined to see if it is changing, Snyder said.
And since there are no requirements that positive H1N1 tests be reported to the health department, only
about a dozen such reports have been submitted in Wood County.
Though many schools are seeing increases in the number of sick children, with some hitting 20 percent
absenteeism, no schools in Wood County have closed due to the flu, Snyder said.