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(WHAS11) - Health officials expect the swine flu vaccine to arrive in mid-October and they've already made plans to administer the vaccine to your kids at school.
We've already had a few schools close because of flu illness, Taylor County Schools and Liberty Elementary in Oldham County.
Floyd County Schools and Jefferson County Schools want to prevent that by vaccinating your children with your permission when health officials get the H1N1 vaccine.
Over 12,000 kids attend Floyd County Schools in southern Indiana.
In Jefferson County over 100,000 students attend the public school system.
What better places to mass immunize a target group with the H1N1 vaccine? That's the plan.
The Floyd County Health Department and the school district have been organizing this since July.
And with parental consent, your child could get the H1N1 vaccine during school hours in their school's gymnasium.
?"We've also contacted the private schools. The plan is to immunize the children in school where they're all assembled so we can get the most number of people vaccinated in the shortest amount of time," said Dr. Tom Harris, Floyd Co. health officer.
Medically trained staff would administer the vaccine. The question is, do health officials even know when they'll get the vaccine and if so, how much of it will they get?
"That's a very good question and the short answer is 'no.'" Harris said.
"We don't know how many doses we'll be getting or what type of vaccine we'll be getting we're anticipating something in the nature of 5-10k doses, but we don't know for sure yet."
The situation is much the same in Jefferson County. Parents will sign a consent form and clinics will be held in schools for students to get vaccinated.
But before that can happen in either county, the first batch of vaccines will go to target groups before the school clinics, those groups are health care workers, childcare providers, pregnant women, adults with medical problems and school aged children.
But the delay won't take long.
"We know that the virus is around in the community so taking 6 weeks or 2 months in the schools is not going to work up to 10 a day to get through most of the schools in a couple of weeks," said Dr. Matt Zahn, Jefferson Co. Health Dept.
And if you're concerned the vaccine isn't safe or if you've heard it's "experimental", Dr. Harris says, "it's not an experimental vaccine at all. The risk of complication is the same as your yearly flu shot."
We've received a lot of questions from parents about why they're not notified about every flu-like case.
Dr. Zahn says for two reasons.? First, most cases are mild. And second, there are thousands of cases out there as opposed to isolated cases.
Also, WHAS11 has been told Bullitt County school officials will meet with their health department Wednesday to devise a plan to distribute the H1N1 vaccine.
