By TEDDYE SNELL

Press Staff Writer

Over the past few years, employees at the Cherokee County Health Department spent the latter part of October and the month of November in a full-on sprint, getting patients vaccinated for the seasonal flu.

This year is a little different, due to the spread of swine flu, or the H1N1 virus. The vaccination plan for swine flu more closely resembles a marathon.

According to Linda Axley, CCHD administrator, the vaccine has been measured in its distribution, with high-risk groups being targeted first.

“In the last three weeks, Oklahoma began receiving its first shipments of H1N1 vaccination,” said Axley. “States are told they’re receiving X number of vaccinations, and at the last minute, it ends up being much less.”

For instance, CCHD was told it would receive 20,000 vaccines for week three of the distribution plan, but got only 2,000. That’s not to say there will be a long-term shortage, only that it will take time to get everyone vaccinated.

The first week of distribution, CCHD targeted school-age children in its coverage area, which includes Cherokee, Mayes and Adair counties.

“We worked closely with the schools, monitoring absentee rates,” said Axley. “Since none of the schools at the time were running absentee rates at 15 percent above normal, we distributed vaccination to residential educational facilities who had higher rates.”

CCHD included Sequoyah Schools, the United Methodist Children’s Home, Cookson Hills Christian School, Talking Leaves Job Corps, the Tenkiller Adventure program and Thunderbird Youth Academy in its first vaccination effort.

“For the second week of distribution, we had enough information from the public schools regarding higher absentee rates,” said Axley. “So we distributed vaccine to deal with the significant amount of illness in the public schools around Oct. 12.”

Last week, the health department finally had the opportunity to distribute vaccine to health care providers.

“Health care providers had to pre-register to administer the vaccine,” said Axley. “Part of their agreement with the federal government is they cannot charge for the vaccine itself, but can charge an administrative fee comparable to what a patient would pay with Medicare or Medicaid.”

Axley said the federal government is also providing supplies necessary to see that everyone is protected – including syringes, gloves, bandages and containers.

“As you can imagine, we really appreciate that,” said Axley.