Santa Clara County officials announced Thursday they had received an additional 26,000 doses of H1N1 flu vaccine, but that is still far less than expected. It could mean fewer people will receive the vaccine, they said.

Santa Clara County spokeswoman Gwen Mitchell said the county had initially been allotted 211,000 doses, but on Wednesday the number was reduced to 8,800. Thursday morning, the county received another 26,000 doses, according to a press release.

"There's been a lower production of the vaccine nationwide, so there are fewer doses altogether available for distribution nationwide," Mitchell said.

She said officials are concerned about why the supply hadn't arrived as of Wednesday afternoon.

Mitchell said county health officials are going to continue to raise the issue with the state and to contact the manufacturers of the vaccine to ask for a reasonably adequate supply.

"We're going to keep the pressure on," she said.

Board of Supervisors President Liz Kniss said additional doses of the H1N1 vaccine injections are necessary for a county with a population of 1.8 million residents.

County officials estimated that about 800,000 residents meet the federal criteria of those at-risk of illness or serious complication from the H1N1 virus.

As of October 28, 435 people in Santa Clara County have been hospitalized with serious complications related to the H1N1 virus and 13 have died since May. In California, there have been 4,047 hospitalizations and 249 deaths, according to a county report.

The Santa Clara County Public Health Department will immediately begin to redistribute vaccine to local medical providers.

For the next week, these providers have been instructed to give the vaccine to people who are at highest risk for infection and complications from the H1N1 flu, or care for high risk individuals who cannot receive vaccine, according to a county statement on Thursday.

Starting on November 7, the department will begin vaccination clinics for the following groups of people:
1. Pregnant women;
2. People who live with or provide care for infants under six months;
3. Children and young adults between the ages of 6 months and 24 years;
4. Adults between the ages of 25 and 64 years who have medical conditions that put them at higher risk for flu-related complications; and,
5. Healthcare and emergency medical services workers.

The first public clinic for those at highest risk will be held on Nov. 7 from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. as long as supplies last.

The clinic will be located at the Santa Clara County Fairgrounds and Valley Health Center Sunnyvale, 660 S. Fair Oaks Ave., Sunnyvale. Other clinic locations, dates and times will be added when more shipments of vaccine arrive, according to the press release.

Officials encourage the public to continue to check on the health department's website for updates.

When more reliable shipments of vaccine begin to flow into the county, the health department will notify all public and private healthcare providers when they can begin to vaccinate the general public, the release said.

Earlier this month, the public health department and 50 medical providers in the county received 14,000 doses of the nasal spray. It was administered to healthy children between the ages of 2 and 10.

Health providers in San Mateo County were expecting to receive 90,000 doses of the vaccine by the end of the month, which were to be sent directly to the providers.

Instead, the state health department sent only the 9,000 doses that the health system had ordered to be used as reserve extras in case a provider ran out, according to San Mateo County Health System spokeswoman Robyn Thaw said.

Those doses given to the county health system were immediately distributed to providers, she said.

Thaw said the vaccinations will be given to people in the high-risk group first, including pregnant women, caretakers of infants under six months, health care and emergency medical services personnel, children six months through 4 years, and children 5 through 18 years old who have chronic illness.

"The state did not provide anything directly to the providers in this last shipment," she said.

She added that had the county health system known the providers would not be receiving their requested doses, the San Mateo County Health System would have ordered more.

It's unclear when more doses will be delivered.

"At this point we don't know when more is going to come in," Thaw said. "Supplies will be limited at first. We expect the doses to gradually increase over the month."

For more information about the H1N1 flu and vaccination clinics offered by the Santa Clara County Public Health Department, visit www.sccphd.org.

— Bay City News Service