Hunting For Swine Flu Vaccine

The swine flu vaccine remains scarce, but is slowly becoming a little less difficult to find.

Some people are getting the vaccine at doctors' offices, some at college health centers, and some at public flu clinics. You're best bet will depend on where you live.

As KQED's Sarah Varney reports on Tuesday's All Things Considered, in some parts of California the best source for H1N1 vaccine might be a shopping mall, while in others only a doctor's office will do. Each state orders vaccine from the CDC to be delivered to "distribution sites," such as hospitals, clinics, and doctors' offices. Who receives it and how they distribute it varies.

 

In Imperial County, east of San Diego, for example, one-third of the population is uninsured, so more of the vaccine went to public clinics than doctors' offices. For suburban Contra Costa County, outside of San Francisco, this meant setting up a flu clinic at the local mall, a central location for the county's residents. In Sacramento County, though, many of the residents are state employees, and therefore insured, so almost all of the vaccine there has been given to private providers.

Plenty of problems remain. Today, Senators Joe Lieberman and Susan Collins grilled officials from the Department of Health and Human Services at a hearing, after sending a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius saying they just didn't approve of the current distribution system.

Sebelius and HHS have repeatedly stuck to the advice that states should vaccinate only "high risk" groups. That's why some of the major distribution sites right now are pediatrician's offices, elementary schools and college campuses. Lieberman and Collins think the high-risk group should have been narrower when it found out such a small portion of vaccine would be available.

And some of the community distribution methods are stirring up more controversy, like who's making sure shots are only going to the risk groups? The batches ordered by Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to be distributed to their workers caused a backlash.

For now though, if you're between the ages of six months and 24 years old, pregnant, a caretaker of an infant, a health care worker, or have a chronic health condition you can be vaccinated, if you can track down a shot. For help finding the right site where you can get your vaccine, go to the CDC's flu shot locator of Google's.

But we might suggest heading directly to your county or state's public health Web site, to avoid the dizzying number of pages you click to from CDC.