UGA receives 4,100 doses of H1N1 vaccine
November 30, 2009 by DALLAS DUNCAN
Filed under News
The University received its first major shipment of swine flu vaccines on Nov. 19, and students are encouraged to take advantage of the University Health Center’s free vaccines sooner rather than later.
Ron Forehand, medical director for the University Health Center, said 4,100 doses were received, and about 5,000 more are expected.
As of Nov. 23, he said 229 of the vaccines had been administered.
“The sooner [students] are vaccinated, the better,” he said in a telephone interview last week. “The real threat is they become infected and they go home [for the holidays] and infect someone.”
He said each person who contracts H1N1 can infect an average of 1.8 to two people, and it can take between two to six weeks for a student to obtain full immunity to swine flu.
The University ordered 9,000 vaccines early in the fall semester.
“It may not sound like a lot, but it represents three times the normal vaccine rate,” Forehand said. “It’s a little bit of a leap.”
Though Forehand said about 2,000 to 2,500 students get a seasonal influenza vaccine each year, 9,000 swine flu vaccines certainly is not a lot compared to the amount ordered by other Georgia universities. Georgia Southern, for example, ordered 20,000 doses.
“The Department of Community and Public Health established a formula to calculate the number of doses a vaccine provider could request,” Forehand said. He said the amount of vaccine ordered was determined by looking at the percentage of University students in the highest priority group listed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
He said some schools chose to order enough vaccines to cover faculty and staff as well as students and health care workers. The University Health Center chose to only order vaccines for students.
“Since our local [branch of the DCPH] advised us that the vaccine would be widely available in the community for faculty and staff, and current UGA student visits to the Health Center is higher than it has ever been, we decided to focus all our personnel on the needs of students,” Forehand said.
Forehand said Claude Burnett, the director of the northeast Public Health district, informed him H1N1 vaccines are readily available in the Athens area.
To get a free H1N1 vaccine from the University Health Center, Forehand said students – and their spouses or partners – should contact either their assigned clinic or the allergy and travel clinics and make an appointment. Forehand said dates are being determined for vaccine clinics at the Tate Center.
The two types of H1N1 vaccine are intranasal and injectable. The intranasal vaccine, Forehand said, can only be taken by “otherwise healthy people” because it is a live, mild virus. The killed injectable vaccine is available for those who are not allergic to chicken eggs, which are used to produce the vaccine, or have not had Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder.
The side effects of H1N1 vaccines are similar to those of the seasonal flu vaccine, Forehand said.
Mild effects can appear immediately after the vaccine is administered, and generally dissipate after two days. Those of the injectable vaccine include soreness around the injection site, fainting, head and muscle aches, fever and nausea. For the intranasal vaccine, runny noses, headaches, fatigue and sore throats have been reported, he said.
“The risk of any vaccine causing serious harm, or death, is extremely small,” Forehand said. “Life-threatening allergic reactions to vaccines are very rare. If they do occur, it is usually within a few minutes to a few hours after the shot.”
He said there were several options for students who receive the vaccine and experience an adverse reaction.
“The best [option] is to contact the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System on the Web,” Forehand said. “If a student has a severe reaction, we would like to know about it.”
He said students experiencing an ongoing reaction can either make an appointment with their assigned clinic or visit the Urgent Care clinic to be evaluated. He added students were also free to notify University Health Center officials without being evaluated, using a link on the center’s Web site.
Forehand said it is recommended students have both seasonal and H1N1 vaccines. The seasonal vaccine prevents against three types of influenza, but it’s in short supply these days.
“We’ve been assured there will be [additional] H1N1 vaccines available,” Forehand said. “I’m less confident we’ll be able to order more seasonal vaccine if they quit manufacturing it.”
He said the University Health Center had administered 2,730 seasonal vaccines, 2,000 of those to students, by Nov. 23. There are some seasonal vaccines left for students at a cost of $15.
