By Michael Copley, Staff Writer
mcopley@powhatantoday.com

Powhatan County residents are not the only ones going without the H1N1 flu vaccine. Inoculation plans across the state and country have been delayed and reworked because of shortages of the vaccine, and those plans cannot be implemented until more shipments arrive.

The entire country has seen “lower than predicted yields from vaccine manufacturers,” but Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said yields from manufacturers are now “more in-line with original predictions.” Health officials expect the additional shipments of the vaccine to arrive by mid-November.

The Powhatan Health Department, under the umbrella of the Chesterfield Health District (CHD), administered the H1N1 vaccine October 22 to the county’s emergency first responders, but none of the schools in Powhatan have been able to offer the vaccine to students.

The Director of the CHD, Dr. William R. Nelson, explained vaccinations at some schools in the City of Richmond and the surrounding counties were highly publicized, which made it look like certain localities had ample supplies of the vaccine while others went without.

But he said there was not, and is not, a system of hierarchy for distribution. As part of the CHD’s revised vaccination plan, all schools in the district will be supplied the vaccine at the same time- once additional supplies become available. Nelson said he expects those additional shipments to arrive in the second week of November.

Residents should call the Powhatan Health Department periodically and check with their doctors’ offices because the vaccine is available in limited supplies, said Nelson. With that limited supply, children and pregnant women are priorities for inoculation. 

The level of alarm in the area “goes up and down,” Nelson said, but the “average citizen has been very understanding.” He said H1N1 is a “fairly serious decease,” especially for pregnant women and children.

A six-year-old student in Amelia County died last week of the H1N1 virus. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, the state Health Department said the girl was the “10th person in Virginia to die from causes related to the H1N1 flu.”

The Powhatan County Schools website is reporting 202 current cases of swine flu in the county’s student population, with a total of 430 cases reported to the schools this year (as of 10/23/09). There are about 4,500 students in the school division.

Powhatan School Superintendent Dr. Margaret S. Meara said “the ‘count’ on the website [comes from] cases where parents tell us they think their children have swine flu…these number are not verified or confirmed. They are ‘reported’ by parents who may or may not know if the children really have swine flu.”

In a letter to parents dated September 18, Meara asked that sick students be kept home from school and that the school be notified if the student is diagnosed with swine flu.

Meara wrote, “We have been told that there will be many cases of this illness during the coming months…At school we will be washing, wiping and scrubbing as much as possible. Any effort to improve cleanliness will help. We urge you to do the same at home…”

Some schools in the Richmond region and around the country, including Amelia County Schools this week, have had to shut down or have considered closing because of high rates of illness.

Powhatan schools would shut down only “when we can longer staff them, and/or the Chesterfield Health Department advises to do so,” Meara wrote in an email. “We are not near that point yet and hopefully will not be. The cases have been spread out among all of the schools and also, people get sick and then recover, so it’s not like having everyone sick at the same time.”

She confirmed the H1N1 vaccine will be administered through the schools. “When [doses of the vaccine] are made available to us, we will reschedule the clinics and notify the parents,” she said. “We can be ready at a moment’s notice once the vaccine is available to us.”

Related Articles and Resources

• H1N1 Flu resources

• Powhatan County Public Schools’ message to parents about H1N1 Shots - 10/21/09

• Amelia cleans schools, buses to combat swine flu

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• More flu vaccine ready in U.S.; kids need 2 doses