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Still no swine flu vaccine for general public in MeckCo

http://66.225.205.104/JR20091026.mp3

People in some parts of the country have started lining up to get the H1N1 vaccine, but it's still not available to the public in Mecklenburg County. WFAE's Julie Rose reports. So far, Mecklenburg County has received about 8,000 doses of the vaccine - far from enough for the nearly one million people living here. Mecklenburg County Health Department spokesman Rick Christenbury says most of those doses went to doctors, nurses and EMTs on the front lines of the swine flu pandemic. Less than a thousand doses remain. Christenbury says those will go to women and children who already have appointments at the county's health clinic for people on the WIC program. "It's a high priority population - pregnant women, small children, women carrying for infants," explains Christenbury. "And with the limited amount of vaccine that we have, it's an efficient way to deliver some to the high priority patients that we already have scheduled." Manufacturers of the swine flu vaccine said it would be available to the general public by now. But production has been delayed, while cases of the swine flu continue to rise in Mecklenburg County and around the nation. So when will it be available to those who want it? "We just don't know," says Christenbury. "This week alone we're scheduled to get just 200 doses, which is not going to go very far."