Nearly 750 residents served at Flu Mist clinic
An hour into the Flu Mist clinic at the Veterans Memorial
Building Nov. 1, public health staff members and American Medical
Response staff were calm and collected.
Nearly 750 residents served at Flu Mist clinic
An hour into the Flu Mist clinic at the Veterans Memorial Building Nov. 1, public health staff members and American Medical Response staff were calm and collected.
The scramble of last-minute planning conducted by the staff the night before was not apparent. While the public health staff knew they were having a flu vaccination clinic months ago, they waited until the last minute to plan it all out with good reason.
“We wanted to do it on purpose because we wouldn’t have time to plan it in advance [in an emergency],” said Samela Perez, the public information officer for San Benito Public Health.
The only planning that was done ahead of time for the distribution of Flu Mist vaccinations – a nasal vaccination – was advertising the event and distributing information to local newspapers. The assignment of jobs – from checking people in to the clinic to logging them out at the end of the clinic – were all done the Wednesday before the event to make the drill as real as possible.
“The good thing is we kind of want it to be last minute because in an emergency we won’t have time to plan,” said Joseph Alvarado, an emergency services specialist with the county. “Each time we do it, we get better.”
Last year the flu vaccination was offered for free to residents 65 and older. This year the Flu Mist was available to residents without chronic illnesses from ages 2 to 49.
Throughout the first hours of the clinic, a steady stream of individuals and families, queued up in a roped off line. At the multiple registration tables, there was one staff member who spoke English and one who spoke Spanish. Public Health staff also had a telephone number to call if they needed a translator for another language. Each family was registered at the same time and sent to the same table for their vaccination.
The staff had an area set aside for people with special needs so they would not have to wait in line.
Perez said the goal was to keep family groups together throughout.
Karri Brown had seen the signs up about the clinic around town and decided to bring her 7-and-4-year-old sons to the event.
“It’s a lot easier than having to explain needles,” Brown said. “It’s a lot less traumatic.”
Staff members and volunteers timed how long it took from registration to check out for each person at the clinic. The goal was to speed up from last year’s time of a little less than nine minutes per person. This year it took each person an average of 7.81 minutes to get through the clinic.
“It did not even take five minutes,” Brown said. “It took longer to get a parking spot.”
In the first eight minutes of the clinic, staff had administered 120 dosages of the vaccine.
Most people who came out for the clinic preferred to receive the flu vaccine by nasal spray rather than by injection.
Aurora Alexander, 13, got a flier about the vaccine at her school.
“At first, it was kind of a shock,” she said, of the spray, adding that she doubted she would have shown up if a needle were involved.
The flu clinic is one of many drills San Benito County’s Health and Human Services Agency has conducted in the last two years to prepare for emergencies from a flu pandemic to earthquakes.
“If there were an actual natural disaster or public health emergency, it would be us inoculating people,” Perez said.
