Supervisor Liz Kniss bemoaned the small number of doses of the H1N1 vaccine in Santa Clara County and called their slow distribution "political" during a community forum on the disease last week at the Mountain View Senior Center.
"This has been a very trying time for us, with H1N1," Kniss said, adding that she and other county officials have been "angry, upset and outraged" at the plodding distribution of the vaccine.
Kniss, who is president of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors and represents Mountain View and Palo Alto, hosted the forum on Thursday evening to inform the public on the pandemic and ways county health officials are working to stop it.
Because the county has been so vocal about the shortage, she said, officials finally got a response from the state. Two weeks ago the county had received only 8,800 doses of H1N1 vaccine, far less than the 200,000-dose shipment they were expecting. But as of Thursday night, Kniss said, there had been 147,000 doses delivered to Santa Clara County.
"There really hasn't been a whole lot of consistency or coordination to this," she said, adding that the county is "well aware" of the uneven distribution of vaccine among states.
Kniss said the first shipments of vaccine from the state went to Kaiser, because it was determined on the state level that the provider could reach a large population quickly.
Other health providers, as well as the county health department itself, were forced to wait for new shipments, noted county health officer Dr. Marty Fenstersheib. This despite the fact that they had requested the vaccine at the same time, and through the same Web, site as Kaiser.
"We submitted our orders and didn't see our vaccine," he said.
The vaccine scarcity, he said, was due to several factors. The first is that production for the H1N1 vaccine did not begin as early, because it is a new strain. Fenstersheib said each vaccine must be grown in an egg, and this particular vaccine grew much slower than anticipated.
The production of seasonal flu vaccine was halted to put full efforts into producing H1N1 vaccine, he said. That caused a scarcity of the seasonal flu shots as well.
The bottom line, he said, is the county has now received nearly 150,000 doses and "There will be more vaccine coming."
Fenstersheib spoke for about an hour about the virus -- what makes it "pandemic," what people can do to stay healthy, and why there has been a shortage of both the H1N1 and regular seasonal flu vaccine.
"Occasionally we get a virus that is brand new to the whole world," he said, adding that being a "new strain" is one condition of labeling a virus "pandemic." The other quality that makes a virus pandemic is that it easily spreads from one human to another, which the H1N1 does.
Because this is a new strain, he said, "for the most part all of us are susceptible to it. We don't have any internal immunities, any antibodies against it."
The H1N1 virus, he said, shows the same symptoms as the seasonal flu. It usually begins with a fever that comes on quickly. In children, he said, it can present itself with gastrointestinal symptoms as well.
Like the seasonal flu as well as many other colds and viruses, H1N1 is spread through respiratory fluids, he said. He talked about the "cloud" of droplets that is often emitted from a sneeze.
"All of those droplets are also covered with virus and those virus can attach themselves to your face, eyes," he said, emphasizing the importance of hand washing, keeping hands away from the face and staying home when flu-like symptoms arise.
As obligated as people may feel to go to work or not skip a test at school, he said, "You end up going to work and coughing on a bunch of people," and spreading illness.
"The majority of the population (that gets the H1N1 flu) is going to get fairly mild illness and can be taken care of at home," he said.