Flu vaccines slowly reaching Ventura County

The availability of seasonal flu and H1N1 vaccines continues to be limited in Ventura County.

Seasonal flu supplies at family health clinics are being given only to high-risk patients. 

The county’s Public Health Department earlier this week received a shipment of H1N1 vaccines that it began administering on Monday in its free, walk-in clinics. “The quantity of vaccine received does not even begin to immunize the at-risk population in Ventura County,” said Dr. Robert Levin, health officer. “It only represents 1 percent of the vaccine we hope to eventually get.”

Due to manufacturing holdups, several hundred doctors and a number of medical centers in the county—including Los Robles Hospital and Medical Center in Thousand Oaks—continue to wait for orders that have been placed for the H1N1 vaccine.

“We don’t know when we’re going to get it,” said hospital spokesperson Kris Carraway-Bowman. “Every time we get a date it gets canceled.”

A seasonal flu clinic will be held from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sat., Nov. 14 at Los Robles Surgery Center at 2190 Lynn Road. The free, walkin clinic will give preference to those age 60 and older and to anyone with a chronic illness such as diabetes or cancer, Carraway-Bowman said.

“Those considered young and healthy—if we’re running low— we may have to turn away, but we really feel we have enough to serve everybody,” she said.

The clinic will receive at least 1,000 doses of the vaccine, but Carraway-Bowman is hoping for as many as 1,500 doses.

“We haven’t seen an increase in patients coming in with the flu,” she said. “I think people have been very vigilant washing their hands and keeping them off their nose, eyes and mouth.”

Two million doses of the swine flu vaccine have been shipped to California since Oct. 28. Additional vaccines will be shipped as they become available, according to the Center for Disease Control website. State health officials anticipate receiving about 20 million vaccinations in both mist and injectable forms.

Those eligible for the swine flu vaccine are children and young people from 6 months to 24 years old, pregnant women, healthy people who range in age from 2 years old to 49 years old and have in-home contact with children younger than 6 months and people between 25 and 64 years old who have high-risk medical conditions such as lung disease, heart disease, diabetes and cancer. As additional vaccine becomes available, more of the population will be eligible to receive it.

People not included in these groups have been shown to be at low risk for serious illness from the H1N1 virus.

The county has the FluMist, a nasal spray vaccine for H1N1, at its walk-in clinics. A limited amount of the free vaccines are available daily.

The clinics are at 2240 E. Gonzales Road, Ste. 140, North Oxnard; 2500 South Sea St., Ste. B, North Oxnard; 660 Los Angeles Ave., Ste. B2, Simi Valley; and 3147 Loma Vista Road, Ventura. Clinic hours are 8:30 to 11:30 a.m. and 1 to 4:30 p.m. daily. The Simi Valley clinic is open during those hours but only on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

Before going to a flu clinic, download and fill out the form available at www.vchca.org. Follow the swine flu prompts to get to the form.

For more information, call the county hotline Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at (805) 9815390. For regular updates, e-mail VCPH.Updates@ventura.org with “Subscribe” in the subject line.