A stick, then a sticker: More Linn County residents get H1N1 flu vaccine

CEDAR RAPIDS - Nolan McGowan has had enough vaccinations to know he doesn't like them.

But at 19 months, Nolan is too young to receive his H1N1 flu vaccine in nasal mist form, so when his mom, Jolene McGowan of Center Point, brought him to Linn County Public Health's clinic Sunday afternoon, he took it the old-fashioned way, via the needle. Only when his mother and nurse Eileen Brown tugged his pants down to give the injection in his leg did Nolan give voice to his objections, but in less time than it takes to tell about it, he became one of 816 county residents to be immunized Sunday.

“The anticipation is the worst,” said Brown as medical assistant Faye Thomas offered Nolan a sticker for his trouble.

Brown and Thomas were two of more than 40 volunteers staffing 17 rooms at the Community Health Free Clinic, 947 14th Ave. SE, where the county's second H1N1 clinic was held. It's the first time the county has held such mass clinics since the last swine flu outbreak in 1976 - before that, it was the polio eradication program of the 1950s - but it seems to be working.

With about 18,000 H1N1 immunizations in the county, including 695 at a Nov. 6 clinic, “we are starting to see some population-level immunity” measured through reduced school and workplace absences, said Stephanie Neff, deputy director of Linn County Public Health.

The earlier clinic was open only to children 2 through 16, health care workers and those who work with children. The supply of vaccine now allows immunizations to be offered to those groups as well as anyone 6 months through 24 years and anyone 25 through 64 with a chronic health condition.

“I was hoping I would be able to get in,” Jane Schumacher said. “I just had to make a bunch of calls, and I got lucky, I guess.”

Schumacher, 59, of Cedar Rapids, has asthma - “if I get upper respiratory (infections), I get really sick. But it seems it's been (affecting) kids.”

Still, it was a relief to get the vaccination, she said as she waited the recommended 10 to 15 minutes before leaving to ensure it didn't trigger an adverse reaction.

“This was really well-thought-out,” she said.