Dec. 4--Rows of chairs sat empty at Veterans Memorial.
Dana Warner, the guy in charge of handing out tickets and answering initial questions, had a thick book on his chair, just in case.
Nurses stationed at tables with plenty of vaccine waved to signal open seats.
H1N1 vaccine clinics aren't what they used to be.
Tuesday night's Columbus Public Health clinic was absent the weary-eyed parents who'd spent hours entertaining toddlers. There were no frantic public-health workers trying to move people through as fast as possible.
Vaccine recipients and their parents thought this was great news.
Public-health leaders, though, are concerned and thinking hard about how to reach more people and keep public interest high in the face of waning demand.
H1N1 flu continues to sicken many Americans, and the risks to some people are serious.
Yesterday, Columbus Public Health said a second Franklin County child who had the virus died Nov. 13.
Aden Hong of Columbus died of other medical conditions, not from H1N1, said the Rev. Ben Blowers of Columbus Wesleyan Methodist Church. Some of Aden's relatives attend his church. Blowers did not share further details.
The boy is the second child in Franklin County who died after contracting the virus. Jon Fowler, an eighth-grader at Holy Spirit School in Whitehall, died on Oct. 8 at Nationwide Children's Hospital. After his death, a classmate told The Dispatch that Fowler had asthma.
As of yesterday, the Ohio Department of Health had confirmed 41 deaths associated with the virus, including three pediatric deaths. The state list did not include Hong's. Health officials will never have a complete count of H1N1 deaths, in large part because there's no requirement that adult deaths be reported.
Each year, about 36,000 Americans die of complications from seasonal flu.
To try to lower the toll attributed to the H1N1 strain, doctors, hospitals and public-health agencies have been working to vaccinate as many people as possible.
About 2.3 million doses of vaccine have come into the state, enough to cover less than half of those considered at greatest risk for complications, said Kristopher Weiss, spokesman for the state Health Department.
Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Teresa Long cautioned that lower rates of flu-related activity seen for the past several weeks don't mean the flu is gone.
"I'm worried that we're not out of the woods on this yet, that there may still be a lot of disease coming our way," she said.
By the end of the city's three-hour clinic Tuesday, nurses had given 1,016 doses of vaccine of 2,000 available.
Two of those went to Jenna and Hannah Wagoner, 6-year-old twins from New Albany who were there for their second dose. For the first dose, their parents opted for a Geauga County clinic with much shorter lines than those here, said their mother, Amy.
She was pleasantly surprised by the speedy clinic this week, as were Kim and Keith Anderson of southwestern Columbus, who brought their six children.
"It was convenient, very efficient and very well-organized," Mrs. Anderson said.
It also was free, unlike a visit to the pediatrician's office or to Walmart, which is administering a limited number of doses of the vaccine in the Columbus area for $15 each.
As she has seen lines dwindle, Long said she's trying to think of new approaches to getting vaccine to more people, including those who often struggle to get health care.
As of yesterday, she hadn't planned any school-based clinics, but she was planning one at Easton and one at a largely African-American church. She also was looking to vaccinate some vulnerable people in smaller clinics not open to the general public.
The state has not yet decided to open up vaccine availability to the general public, and it has intervened in cases where local agencies have done that on their own, Weiss said. Elsewhere in the country, including some areas of Utah, vaccine is being given to anyone who wants it.
Jesse Carter, spokesman for the Delaware General Health District, said he, like Long and Weiss, worries about the many at-risk people who haven't been vaccinated.
"It's just a question of, 'How do we reach people? How do we make them aware of our clinics?' "
mcrane@dispatch.com
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