TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Swine flu vaccinations should start in Kansas next week, with the first doses going to health care workers and young children, state health officials said Wednesday.
Local health departments will begin receiving the vaccine in a nasal mist in the next few days, state Health Director Jason Eberhart-Phillips said. About 16,000 doses will be distributed initially.
Officials hope Kansas will eventually receive more than 3 million doses of the vaccine to inoculate every resident against the H1N1 flu strain. Some young children need two doses. But Eberhart-Phillips said it will be months before everyone who wants to be vaccinated can get the nasal mist or a shot.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment recommends the first doses go to health care workers who have direct contact with patients and healthy children age 2 through 9.
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"I would anticipate that the first Kansans would be immunized on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week," Eberhart-Phillips said during a news conference. "It should arrive roughly at the same time everywhere, if the system works right."
But some rural counties may not receive any of the first shipments.
Eberhart-Phillips said the federal contractor delivering the vaccine, San Francisco-based McKesson Corp., will send it in shipments of at least 100 doses. KDHE plans to allocate doses for each county based on its population of residents under 25.
"We're not going to divide 16,000 down to where a small county in the frontier part of the state will only get seven doses," Eberhart-Phillips said. "It's not feasible to do that."
KDHE has not finished calculating how much vaccine to send to each county, including the small, rural ones, he said.
"We will ensure that those counties get their full allocation," Eberhart-Phillips said. "It may just be that they'll get a larger share from the next allocation."
Six people have died in Kansas after contracting swine flu, and cases have been reported in 55 of the state's 105 counties since late April.
Health care workers are a priority for vaccinations because they have contact with large numbers of people, including those who've contracted swine flu.
"Their risk of exposure is much higher, and then of course they can spread it to everybody else," said Nancy Tausz, the Johnson County Health Department's director of disease containment.
Children are a priority partly because, according to KDHE, more than half of the Kansas swine flu cases confirmed by labs have occurred in people age 5 through 24. Also, children age 6 months to 9 years need two doses about three weeks apart, Eberhart-Phillips said.
"To get a head start for them, while we've got early vaccine, I'd hate to use it and waste the earliest supplies on people who can't benefit as much," he said.
He also said KDHE hopes soon to post on its Web site a list of places in each county where the swine flu vaccine is available.
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On the Net:
Kansas Department of Health and Environment: http://www.kdheks.gov/