If you have been thinking about getting the H1N1 shot and you can't find any shots, here is the list in order of priority of high risk groups. When all of these groups have been immunized the rest of us will have our chance.
• Pregnant women;
• People who live with or care for infants younger than 6 months of age;
• Healthcare workers (HCWs) and emergency medical personnel;
• Persons 6 months to 24 years of age;
• Persons 25-64 years of age who have chronic diseases (including immunodeficiency states) that pose risk for influenza.
When more vaccine becomes available, the following persons should be vaccinated:
• Healthy persons ages 25-64 years; and
• Adults 65 years of age and older.
Patients on the high-priority list should be vaccinated as soon as the vaccine is available. Individuals with the highest priority, as listed above, should be vaccinated first, but stringency of methods to restrict vaccine use is unclear.
Contraindications to the inactivated vaccine include:
• Previous Guillain-Barré syndrome;
• Life-threatening reaction to previous influenza vaccination; and
• Severe illness (a "moderately or severely ill" patient is advised to wait, but a mild upper respiratory infection or other illness is not a contraindication).
Note that pregnancy and breastfeeding are not contraindications to receiving the inactivated vaccine.
The above information is from an article posted yesterday on MedScape. I highly recommend you read it for further details, especially the contraindications to using the LAIV - live attentuated nasal vaccine, which is going to be the vaccine form used in many schools to mass immunize children in school without injections.
This article clarifies a number of issues around safety testing, side effects and vaccine production. Adjuvants such as squalene are NOT in this vaccine. Thimerosal (containing mercury) is in the vaccine. If you don't like this idea, think about the alternative which is risking death from the H1N1 infection. 46% of hospitalized adults with H1N1 complications had no prior medical history. The number of children dying from H1N1 is climbing.
Read this article for further sad details.
Distribution of the shots to doctors in the US is through local Public Health Departments. I have had 500 shots on order since September and received only 10 so far which went to my high risk patients very quickly. No one can tell me when I might get more. No matter what you may see in the news about the shots being widely available., they are not as of now.
drBob