It’s been nearly a year since a new strain of swine flu broke out in Mexico, killing dozens of people. The H1N1 virus quickly spread to the U.S., resulting in several thousand deaths. Communities across the country, including in the Milwaukee area, began holding large scale clinics to vaccinate the population. One such public inoculation is being held Monday in Waukesha County. But as WUWM’s Marti Mikkelson reports, the number of people attending the clinics is waning.
The Waukesha County Health Department began holding large scale clinics last fall, after an elderly woman there died of the virus in summer. Spokeswoman Julianne Klimetz says there were long lines of people and more than 10,000 were served.
“At our highest rate, we were vaccinating over 3,000 people in a week. We’re vaccinating about 150 to 200 people a week at this point.”
Klimetz says demand for the free vaccine has fallen dramatically since the first of the year. She believes there are several reasons the numbers are dwindling.
“We’re starting to see the vaccine being given at Walgreens, the local grocery stores, so the health department isn’t the only place to receive the vaccine like it once was. Also in southeastern Wisconsin, people have access to health care in the public and private sectors so a lot of people are getting the vaccine from their doctors as opposed to the health department,” Klimetz says.
Klimetz says the declining number of people getting the vaccine has coincided with the drop off in the number of deaths from the illness. She says there’s a perception that the virus isn’t as deadly as it once was, but cautions that it is still a threat to children, pregnant women and those with underlying health problems.
In Milwaukee, nine people died of the flu last year. Paul Biedrzycki of the health department says there could be another round of the virus this spring as more people take trips.
“There is that concern and typically we see these waves come in periods of about eight to 12 weeks separated by six to eight weeks and tied to individuals congregating and traveling,” Biedrzycki says.
Biedrzycki says Milwaukee has experienced the same kind of declining numbers as Waukesha has at its clinics. To date about 28,000 people here have been vaccinated. He says that’s only five percent of the population; much lower than the 50 percent the city originally anticipated.
“I think people feel this is comparable to seasonal influenza and very similar in many respects, even though the CDC has reported that hospitalizations from H1N1 infection alone have climbed to as high as 380,000,” Biedrzycki says.
Biedrzycki says the health department has stopped holding mass clinics to the general public and is now focusing on vaccinating children in the schools. Those clinics will finish up next month and the city will continue to monitor the H1N1 virus throughout the summer. Biedrzycki says the department still has thousands of doses of the vaccine available and leftovers could be used to develop next fall’s seasonal flu shot.
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