Leif Faber, left, a Touch of Nature employee from Makanda, and his wife Junko, center, hold their 9-month-old son Kai as he gets his first flu vaccination at the Health Center Tuesday.
The Jackson County Health Department provided flu shots to SIUC staff members and their families. Linda Akins, a Jackson County Health Department nursing secretary, said by 3:30 p.m. almost 750 people received the vaccination, and the clinic expected to run out before the day’s end.
Angie Bailey, director of health education at the Jackson County Health Department, said the department has seen a number of flu cases, but have been instructed to treat any flu symptoms as H1N1.
Because the only tests confirming the H1N1 strain are done after hospitalization and the symptoms of both H1N1 and the seasonal flu are so similar, she could not say how many people in the area have been sick with each string of the flu.
According to the Associated Press, states have ordered almost 6 million doses of swine flu vaccine in the campaign that started last week. The Associated Press also reported the World Health Organization hopes to ship 60 million doses of swine flu vaccine to developing countries in November in an effort to protect their fragile health systems from the pandemic.
