Few Crowds For Swine Flu Vaccine

November 9, 7:59 PMNY High Schools ExaminerKevin Subramany

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Empty clinics were a popular site this weekend during NYC's H1N1 vaccination for students.
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Maybe the small numbers could be attributed to wariness about the new vaccine or a lack of knowledge about the clinics. Whatever the reason, the seven clinics across the city were puzzlingly underused or puzzlingly overprepared.

While the city’s health commissioner, Dr. Thomas A. Farley, said the clinics had the staff and enough vaccine to accommodate about 500 middle- and high-school students per clinic per hour — or as many as 31,500 vaccinations a day — a department spokeswoman put the total vaccinations administered on Saturday at 1,701. So on Sunday, the clinics, operating out of public schools in all five boroughs, began offering the vaccine to pregnant women and increased the age limit for others to 24 from high school age. Still, the turnout was low: 1,749.

If 23 percent of the children in the city’s middle and high schools came, the clinics would have been near maximum capacity. Instead what the department had were large rooms that were mostly empty for students who just were not there.