Vaccine for the H1N1 flu will begin arriving in the nation's hospitals, clinics and schools as early as Tuesday, the start of an effort to protect Americans against a swine flu virus that emerged this past spring and quickly circled the globe.
Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, says the effort ushers in a "challenging few weeks" for health officials.
Even hospitals will have to dole out the vaccine carefully, because they initially won't get enough for their entire staffs. "So they'll make decisions" about who's vaccinated first, says Gregory Poland, an infectious-diseases specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. "It's reasonable that the nurse who works in the neonatal ICU will get it first and someone in dietary services will get it later."
USA Today by Elizabeth Weise, 10/2/09
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Tags: flu, H1N1, Infectious Diseases, swine flu