Ferris Distributes H1N1 Vaccine

The Birkam Health Center has been inun­dated with students

Ferris recently received its sec­ond ship­ment of H1N1 vac­cines last Friday, con­tain­ing around 300 doses, which is being admin­is­tered to any­one under the age of 24 who wishes to obtain it.

Since send­ing out a cam­pus wide announce­ment that said the vac­cines were in, the health cen­ter has had mass quan­ti­ties of stu­dents show­ing up. The first ship­ment that came in a few weeks ago, which was admin­is­tered to high pri­or­ity groups includ­ing preg­nant women, care­tak­ers who look after chil­dren under six months old, clin­i­cal work­ers, and EMT and other pub­lic ser­vice offi­cials, con­tained 200 doses.

Paul Sullivan, PhD, the direc­tor of the Birkam Health Center on cam­pus, said that there will be another ship­ment com­ing in at either the end of this week or early next week con­tain­ing a few hun­dred more doses. Once all of the high risk groups and stu­dents under 24 years of age have received the vac­cine, it will be avail­able to everyone.

Sullivan also said that they have sat­is­fied the Center for Disease Control (CDC) require­ments, and are encour­ag­ing stu­dents to get the vac­ci­na­tion. There are two types of vac­ci­na­tions avail­able, one being a nasal spray, the other being an injec­tion. Most are given the nasal spray, as the injec­tion is reserved for those with con­di­tions that may put them at a higher risk if infected.

The dif­fer­ence between the two is that the nasal spray con­tains an active virus, which is a newer tech­nol­ogy for vac­ci­na­tion, and the injec­tion con­tains an inac­tive one. The nasal spray has also been found to be less effec­tive in peo­ple 50 years and older.

As far as the num­ber of H1N1 cases on cam­pus, Sullivan said that there have been around 130 since the begin­ning of the semes­ter, and the rate per day is no longer increas­ing. While the uni­ver­sity ran out of test­ing kits quickly, it is most likely that the cases with symp­toms resem­bling H1N1 are in fact that.

For stu­dents wish­ing to receive a vac­cine, if the health cen­ter fee of $47 has been paid, there is no charge. Only basic paper­work will be involved. Sullivan said that they could charge a fee for admin­is­ter­ing it, but decided not to.

“For all they’re worth…we will not charge any­thing,” said Sullivan.