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Nov 2, 2009 4:40 pm US/Central
Tarrant Health Dept. Has H1N1 Questions For State
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
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Patricia Hall receives a dose of the FluMist vaccine.
CBS
Tarrant County health workers say they're busy preparing for the next big round of H1N1 vaccinations.
Even though they still have more than 1,000 vaccines available, health workers say they still have to wait on more vaccine from the state. This as, protective parents with unimmunized children grow impatient.
"I know there are a lot of moms like me who are worried for their babies," mother Sara Rios said as she looked at her toddler son in her arms. "Especially pregnant moms and people who have babies like him."
But Tarrant County finds itself at the end of a vaccine supply line that it has little control over.
The state mandated sick children and pregnant women must be vaccinated first. But almost half the vaccines the state sent were nasal mist, not shots. The nasal mist is an airborne virus.
People with any immune system problems can't even be around someone who was vaccinated with the spray. "I took them to the doctor and they didn't want to give them some of their shots and because some of them have asthma and they cannot get it," said Sara Zavala, a mother of four daughters.
The county has fewer than 100 shots left and the 1,400 mist vaccines in stock aren't nearly enough to hold a vaccination event for the hundreds of thousands who could take it.
Right now the county is planning how to distribute the next batch of vaccine.
But official say everything else is out of their hands. "Right now we're waiting to see what the state is going to give us and when the state is going to give it to us," said Tarrant County Health Department spokesman Marc Flake. "Those are two big questions. And the third big question is, who we can use the vaccines they give us on?"
For now county workers are asking people to be patient.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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