• • Lakefield Standard

For the first time in decades, local schools are being asked to play a part in a mass vaccination program for the H1N1 influenza.

Tentative plans for flu shot clinics in schools next week are being made by Cottonwood-Jackson Community Health Service, according to an announcement by C-JCHS administrator Pat Stewart.

Those plans pivot on the arrival of the public health agency’s next shipment of the H1N1 flu shot and if the vaccines do not come in or the supply is too limited, the clinics may not start until December, she said.

Meanwhile, the clinics are coming at a point when flu-like absences across the Jackson County Central School District are waning.

“The numbers are coming down,” said Superintendent Todd Meyer, noting 31 flu-like absences in all schools on Monday, which was half the number from a week ago.

But even at 60 flu-like absences, the outbreak was affecting slightly more than 5 percent of the student population.

“During a regular winter, it would be nice if we only had 60 kids gone,” Meyer said. “If this is the peak, that would be great.”

Absences have been spread fairly equally among the district’s schools, he added.

When the clinics do arrive, the plan is to provide the vaccines first to children 9 and younger, then expand them to all school-age children, said Kris Ehresmann of the Minnesota Department of Health. Previous doses of the flu shot have been reserved for health workers, pregnant women and children with underlying health problems.

Only children who bring completed and signed consent forms with them to school will be given the vaccine. Those forms were expected to be given to public and parochial students this week.

The first clinics will be rolled out to one grade at a time and set up in elementary school gymnasiums or other large spaces during school hours. Specific locations will be announced to parents by radio and letters sent home with students.

“We will have alternate dates all the way through the end of December,” Stewart said, noting that there is too much uncertainty about vaccine supplies to nail down the agency’s plans. “There will be no school clinics if they don’t have enough vaccine to do it.”

The federal government is providing the H1N1 vaccine free.

The concern with the H1N1 flu is that it’s a new virus that people worldwide have never encountered before, as public health emergency preparedness planner Cindy Knabe explained to a Jackson Public Library audience last week, and therefore the population has little to no immunity to the virus. Only three other pandemics have hit the country over the last 90 years — in 1918, 1957 and 1968.

The H1N1 flu was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization in June, and ever since community health leaders have been implementing plans developed since 2002.

“There’s been a lot of planning for this very event that we’re experiencing right now,” Knabe said.

Historically, pandemics start earlier than the seasonal flu season, which often runs from the end of November through March, she said, and they hit in two waves — which means the virus might resurface in February or March.

Pandemics also disproportionately affect younger people.

If the H1N1 hits like the Spanish flu of 1918, Knabe said the worst-case scenario could see 3,650 people in Jackson County clinically ill, with 1,825 outpatient visits, up to 402 people hospitalized and as many as 77 dead. Health care facilities would be overwhelmed, she noted.

“H1N1 is 98 percent of what’s out there,” she said, and it’s spread from coughing, sneezing and touching objects that other people touch.

“If you get this virus, please don’t go out in public,” she said, adding that individuals can be infectious 24 hours before symptoms appear and then throughout the length of their illness.

Also, Knabe said families need to be prepared.

“If everyone gets sick at the same time, do you have enough food and water?” she asked.

Governments have been planning, and she said businesses should too.

“Businesses need to really think about how they handle their sick leaves and being open to alternative work schedules,” she added.

As for public health, its focus is maintaining both public and private-sector essential services, minimizing economic disruption and keeping low-income and other vulnerable populations employed.

The H1N1 vaccine is hoped to help toward that end. Public health officials ran out of their first batch of vaccine after immunizing health care workers and some pregnant women Oct. 29 and 30. In the week that followed, Knabe said no calls of adverse side effects were received. The vaccines do contain thimerosal, the mercury-based preservative used in some vaccines, she said, though public health expects to eventually receive some thimerosal-free flu shots.

“They’re telling us we’ll have enough vaccine by January for anyone that wants it,” she said.

Meanwhile, thorough hand washing and limiting exposure to the virus are key preventative measures. For those with the tell-tale signs — fever, cough, sore throat, runny or stuffy nose, body or headaches, chills and fatigue — the state hotline for flu-related questions is (866) 259-4655.