News - Local News

POSTED: Thursday, Oct. 22, 2009

Few slots left for first Whatcom County swine flu clinics

BELLINGHAM — The mass vaccination clinic for the H1N1 flu in Bellingham has been fully booked, but a few slots are still available for the Oct. 29 clinic in Deming.

Reservations for the Oct. 28 clinic in Bellingham closed Thursday, Oct. 22 – just one day after a call center was opened to accept appointments from those high on the priority list to receive the vaccine.

The call center will close at 3 p.m. Friday, Oct. 23, or when all slots have been filled, according to officials at the Whatcom Pandemic Joint Information Center. Phone lines will open at 1 p.m. The call center number is 778-8170.

A total of 1,800 slots were available for the two clinics.

Additional mass clinics will be announced as more of the swine flu vaccine is shipped to Whatcom County. Residents are urged to regularly check the Whatcom Pandemic Joint Information Center online at www.em.whatcomcounty.org for updates on the vaccine’s availability instead of calling their doctor’s office.

That’s because other medical providers don’t yet have information about the vaccine.

“There will be more vaccine. It will come and we will open it up to other groups,” said Joe Bates, spokesman for Whatcom County government.

Calls have been flooding into the center from Whatcom County residents who want the vaccine, so much so that phone lines were jammed the first day and waits lasted as long as an hour to book an appointment. Other callers were frustrated by a constant busy signal.

Then the call center went down for more than an hour starting at 12:55 p.m. Thursday as part of a power outage that knocked out phone, Internet and e-mail services for Bellingham and Whatcom County govern-ment.

City and county officials said an internal electrical fault at Bellingham-based FiberCloud Data Center, a major Internet service provider for a wide range of local and regional businesses and governments, likely caused the outage.

Other government services and businesses also were affected.

Internet and phone service were restored around 2:15 p.m. But when the power started fluctuating between 4:20 and 5 p.m. Thursday, officials decided to shut down the call center an hour before it was sched-uled to close for the day.

The call center will reopen Friday for appointments for the Deming clinic, which is limited to those in high priority groups who live, work or go to school in Whatcom County.

Appointments for the Deming clinic will be accepted for:

- Pregnant women.

- Health care workers and emergency medical personnel who directly care for patients.

- Household contacts of infants younger than 6 months old, which primarily means parents, siblings and child-care providers.

- Children 6 months through 4 years old.

- Children 5 years to 18 years old with medical conditions that place them at risk for flu complications. Those conditions include asthma, heart disease, immune disorders, or neurological conditions.

Once the needs of these groups have been met, the vaccine will be offered next to other health care workers; children and young adults who are 5 years to 24 years old; and people who are 25 to 64 years old with medical conditions that place them at high risk for flu complications.

The vaccine is free. But those with health insurance should bring insurance cards because an administra-tive fee may be billed to their provider. Manufacturers are making the vaccine slower than expected.

There should be enough vaccine by late November for anyone else who wants it, health officials have said.