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 Tara Downton, 23 weeks pregnant, receives the unadjuvanted H1N1 vaccine from Ottawa Hospital nurse Micheline Goetz at the Riverside Hospital yesterday. (ERROL McGIHON/Sun Media) |
Any kinks that caused long lineups and headaches at flu shot clinics around the city last week appeared ironed out in at least one place Saturday.
Hundreds of pregnant women, their family members and people in other priority groups moved through the Ottawa Hospital’s Riverside campus H1N1 flu shot clinic with relative ease throughout the day. Between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., volunteers at the clinic vaccinated 1,851 members of the public as well as 100 staff members.
“It was pretty steady all day, but not massive lineups,” said Cameron Love, vice-president of planning support services and clinical programs. “From start to finish, people were here no more than 20 minutes or so.”
At the beginning of the day, 70 volunteer doctors and nurses were ready to vaccinate up to 1,000 pregnant women with unadjuvanted doses. Love said it became obvious around 11 a.m. the clinic could handle not only the volume of expectant mothers but also people from other priority groups. That’s when officials began offering up thousands of adjuvanted doses to other priority groups such as children under 5 and adults with underlying health problems.
When the clinic doors first opened just after 8 a.m., about 150 women and their family members were already in line to be vaccinated. The clinic moved them through quickly.
“We had great success by getting lots of nurses and doctors to volunteer,” said Love. “We (had) about 70 people here — 10 physicians and 60 nurses. We (had) an entire pharmacy team that (were) drawing syringes so nurses don’t have to draw them at the bedside, so it’s more efficient.”
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For Shannon Reidel, the decision to get the H1N1 vaccine was an important one. Her two-year-old son has an egg allergy and cannot be vaccinated, so Reidel and her husband got vaccinated Saturday.
“We wanted to make sure that we didn’t bring anything into the house,” she said.
Reidel, who is 36 years old and 25 weeks pregnant, did have concerns at first so she researched the vaccine.
“I didn’t want to be a guinea pig,” she said. “I read everything that the website had, I went to the Canadian Health one and I’m still nervous, but there seems to have been a lot of research done on the (unadjuvanted) one. It seemed the chance of something happening to me was greater if I didn’t get it.”
terri.saunders@sunmedia.ca