Kaiser waiting in line like everyone else for H1N1 vaccine
By: Health Insurance
Submitted: 2009-11-30 23:06:06 | Word Count: 859
Kaiser Permanente, which provides health care to 170,000 Sonoma County residents, has all but run out of swine flu vaccine and officials say they don't know when they'll be getting more. The ongoing delay in the production of H1N1 vaccine has caused the health care Goliath to wait in the same line as providers with much smaller patient populations, including community clinics and private doctors' offices.
“We get it when we get it, just like everyone else,” said Kaiser spokesman Carl Campbell. “We're not dealing with manufacturers, we're dealing with the state and how much pull does anyone have with the state?”
[ advertisement ]
Campbell said Thursday that Kaiser has vaccinated 11,000 people — 9,000 in Santa Rosa and 2,000 at its site in Petaluma — with the H1N1 vaccine. Kaiser has no more injectable H1N1 vaccine and only some flu mist vaccine, which is not recommended for certain populations.
Sutter Health, which has vaccinated close to 4,000 people through its Santa Rosa medical center and affiliated medical foundation, said it also has run out of injectable vaccine. Sutter only has the flu mist form, which it will use for the second dose recommended for young children it vaccinated a month ago.
The current vaccine shortage has exacerbated recent county H1N1 flu clinics, which ideally would have been reserved for local residents who are indigent, have no health insurance or no private physician.
Recent clinics have been flooded with people who, though they have insurance and family doctor, cannot get the vaccine.
The county's third such H1N1 clinic will be held Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at Casa Grande High School in Petaluma, 333 Casa Grande Road.
County officials said that because of the shortage, they will continue to target five priority groups, and will encourage others to stay away.
The five groups are: pregnant women; people who live in a household with, or provide daily care to an infant less than six months old; people age 6 months to 24 years old; adults 25 to 64 years old who have chronic conditions that put them at risk from flu complications; and health-care providers and emergency medical workers.
The state public health department said Wednesday that as of Monday it had filled orders for 5.19 million doses of vaccine to 61 local health jurisdictions, which includes all 58 county health departments. State officials said that number represents enough vaccine for about 13.4 percent of California's population.
Sonoma County has similarly had 66,228 vaccine orders filled by the state, enough to reach 13.5 percent of the county's 491,415 residents.
The difficulty many in the county have had in getting the vaccine may lead some to wonder where has all this vaccine gone. Not all of the 66,228 vaccine doses have been administered and vaccination efforts have spread out among a number of providers.
For example, Southwest Community Health Center has received 2,570 H1N1 vaccine doses, including 1,100 doses at its main Lombardi Court campus in West Santa Rosa and 1,200 at its Chanate campus. Southwest has 680 doses left at the Chanate campus but only has 46 doses left at Lombardi Court.
Sutter Health has administered 23 doses to patients of the medical center, 1,000 to hospital staff and 2,920 doses to patients of doctors with Sutter Medical Foundation North Bay, an affiliate of Sutter Health.
At St. Joseph Health System's Petaluma and Santa Rosa hospitals, more than 1,000 employees and more than 500 others have been vaccinated for H1N1.
The good news this week is that state health officials reported Thursday that flu-related deaths and hospitalizations slowed last week. But they emphasized that the H1N1 strain remains a major problem. Deaths statewide remain in the double-digits weekly, and hundreds of people are still being hospitalized each week, authorities said.
“We are still seeing widespread disease throughout the state,” said Dr. Mark Horton, state health officer. But, he added, “we have not seen increases week by week.”
Many of the outbreaks are in schools, Horton said.
In California, 21 H1N1-related fatalities were reported last week, down from 31 the previous week.
In all, 689 people were hospitalized last week for the H1N1 flu, also known as the swine flu. That figure is down from a peak of 773 for the week that ended Oct. 31. (The hospitalization figures include people who later died from the H1N1 flu.)
So far this year, 318 people in California have died of H1N1 flu, and more than 6,000 have been hospitalized.
In Sonoma County as of Saturday, there have been 10 fatalities, 123 admitted to hospitals and of those, 24 admitted to ICU with H1N1-related medical issues.
