6,000 flu shots offered to most vulnerable North Coast residents

About 6,000 North Coast residents who are most vulnerable to the flu will be inoculated against the virus this weekend at five clinics stretching from Petaluma to Ft. Bragg.

But only Kaiser Permanente members and Mendocino County residents most in danger from flu will benefit from this latest influx of vaccine.

Beginning at 10 a.m. Saturday, Kaiser will dispense at least 4,000 flu shots to high-risk members at its medical offices in Santa Rosa, and more than 1,000 shots at its Petaluma branch, Kaiser representatives said.

Unlike thousands of North Coast residents who have scrounged fruitlessly for the shot, Kaiser members have benefited from the managed-care group's pre-shortage decision to order vaccines from Aventis - U.S. health care providers' lone alternative to Chiron.

"This year, fortunately, Chiron was not one of our suppliers," said Rick Malaspina, spokesman for Kaiser's Northern California region.

In Mendocino County, communicable disease experts have organized three simultaneous clinics Sunday for high-risk residents in Willits, Ukiah and Ft. Bragg and are expected to distribute most of the 1,350 vaccines provided by the state. Identification showing age and Mendocino County residency will be required.

The state has shipped 1,520 doses of vaccine to Lake County, where public health employees have begun taking reservations to inoculate about 700 high-risk seniors. The county does not plan walk-in clinics.

Meanwhile, throughout Sonoma County, public health officials have begun to make the first of 3,300 newly arrived doses of vaccine available to community clinics, hospitals and long-term care facilities.

"It keeps changing as we find out who's getting vaccine through private channels," said Dr. Leigh Hall, Sonoma County's deputy public health officer. "We wanted to make sure that hospitals, emergency rooms and ICUs were covered."

The public health department is working with Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol and Sonoma Valley Hospital in Sonoma to evaluate their needs, for example, Hall said.

The Kaiser clinics, the second of the season offered at each facility, may be the last this year.

For health care workers and caregivers of very young children or the chronically ill elderly, Kaiser's Santa Rosa medical center also will dispense the nasal spray FluMist, a live influenza vaccine approved for healthy people ages 5 to 49.

The nasal spray will not be given Saturday in Petaluma, according to Kaiser.

The shots at the Petaluma clinic will be "first come, first served, and there will be spotters on staff walking through clinic lines to check for vulnerable patients so those can be vaccinated separately" to avoid lengthy waits, said Kaiser spokeswoman Carol Harris.

After Saturday, Kaiser's Santa Rosa clinic will have vaccinated 10,000 members since the U.S. vaccine shortage was triggered last month by contamination at Chiron Corp.'s Liverpool, England, plant.