Ottawa H1N1 vaccine chaos prompts changes

Ottawa Public Health made a number of changes Tuesday in the way it offered the swine flu vaccine after many people waited hours to get vaccinated and others were turned away on the opening day.

Tents were set up Monday outside some clinics that had particularly long wait times, and all clinic locationsput anumber system in place forpatients waiting to get vaccinated.

But lines were still a problem Tuesday, and many people waited up tofour hours to get their shot.

Staff at the Kanata Recreation Centre started turning people away less than two hours after they opened the doors.

"Theyre telling everybody to go, but theyre not makingenough available to everybody," said Shawn Cadieux, who was turned away with his infant son."I think thats putting people who are at risk in an unnecessary situation."

"We hit the ground running yesterday, we learned from the experience yesterday and we keep going," Dr. Isra Levy, Ottawa's medical officer ofhealth,said Tuesday.

Five established clinics and one roving clinic began offering the H1N1 vaccine in Ottawa on Monday, and lines outside began forming more than an hour before most opened at 2:30 p.m. Those clinics were all turning people away by 5 p.m.

Overall, about 4,200 Ottawa residents received the vaccine Monday, fewer than the city had hoped, Levy said.

Now the city plans to:

• Boost the number of medical and non-medical staff at the clinics.
• Extend the hours once there is enough capacity and staff.
• Set aside 3,500 doses of vaccine for the hospital and paramedic sector.
• Have a special expedited line at clinics for front-line health-care workers.
• Speed up the process for getting the vaccine to alternative vaccine providers like hospitals.

The city hopes that in the coming days waits will be limited to an hour, but that target will take a few days to reach, Levy said. In the meantime, Ottawa Public Health will continue to try to help people find the shortest wait times by constantly announcing the least crowded vaccination clinics over the internet using Twitter. Those are being reported by clinic supervisors every two hours.

Vaccination taking longer than expected, Levy says

"It's going somewhat more slowly than we thought," Levy said, adding that staff are spending a lot of time answering questions from people at the clinics.

As a result, he believes the city will be able to vaccinate only about 8,000 people a day once the city's vaccination clinics are running at full capacity, instead of the 12,000 it had previously estimated.

Levy saidhis biggest fear is how people will react if they had a bad experience Monday.

"Certainly, it would be unfortunate if people who did want the vaccine and became frustrated because of the long wait did not return," he said.

Vera Etches, associate medical officer of health, said the city didn't know how many people would come out to the clinics on the first day the vaccine was offered.

"There's a logistical issue of how quickly we can get it into people considering the number of nurses that we have," she said.

She asked residents to be patient, and said there is no shortage of vaccine.