ELBRIDGE --
Jill Marshall thought Monday's H1N1 vaccination clinic in Elbridge would be busy and she wanted to get in early. Her daughters were two of the 1,153 Jordan-Elbridge and Skaneateles school students with vaccination appointments, but she says she was impressed with how quickly everything moved.
Still, Marshall had some reservations about the vaccine. "All the physicians are pushing it so I figured we should do it,” said Marshall. “I don't know if it's great to be pumping these vaccines into their systems but it seemed like an important year to do it."
Dr. Cynthia Morrow, commissioner of the Onondaga County Health Department, said nobody needed to rush and the staff had hundreds more doses of the vaccine on hand than they had appointments.
"If a clinic is scheduled, we will have vaccine for everybody,” said Dr. Morrow. “So you don't need to rush to the first appointment because we will have vaccine for everybody at that clinic."
In Cato-Meridian, the clinic was first come, first served and at least 350 students were vaccinated.
Some staff were shifted to a clinic in Auburn after they had a larger than expected turnout. Deanna Hoey from the Cayuga County Health Department says the high turnout is a good thing and she’s just glad to have as many students protected as possible.
"They're in the schools, they're touching the pencils, they're touching the doorknobs, it runs rampant through schools just like any other germ,” said Hoey.
Students had the choice of a traditional shot or a nasal spray. Nine-year-old Adriana Marshall grimaced as she received the nasal spray but still preferred it to the alternative.
"It tickles,” said Adriana
The next clinic in Onondaga County will be on Thursday at Westhill High School and it will be for students from the Westhill, Solvay and Lyncourt school districts. The county health department hopes to have at least sixteen clinics in schools and they say those clinics will be scheduled as more vaccine doses come in.
