SPOKANE--The Spokane Regional Health District is being inundated with callers trying to make appointments and asking questions about the nasal mist swine flu vaccine.
Five health care workers at any given time are staffing the phone bank and answering close to 100 calls an hour with everyone from concerned parents to the elderly wanting more information.
"The calls were coming in hot and heavy to the clinic so we started up the phone bank again," said Dorthy Maceachern, an epidemiologist with the Spokane Regional Health District.
The phone bank started on Monday trying to relieve the clinic workers because so many people were calling wanting to make appointments for the nasal swine flu vaccine, which is the only kind being offered right now. That will start on Oct. 19.
Getting an appointment is proving to be difficult with the earliest they have more than a month out. Nearly 2,000 people have already signed up.
The spray only applies to healthy people between the ages of 2 and 49, which is why the phone bank has to screen so many callers before they send them down to the clinic.
If you don't want to wait a month for an appointment, there's going to be some free health clinics coming up. The first will be next Saturday at Spokane Veterans Arena.
So far they will only have the nasal spray version at that event, but they are hoping to get a few injections available as well.
Call 324-1495 to if you have on the free clinics.
There's 13 free clinics planned through mid-November if you can't get an appointment.
Healthy people dying from swine flu in Inland Northwest
Health officials can't explain why some of the recent swine flu deaths are happening to healthy adults and not the targeted younger age group.
The Spokane Regional Health District says it's alarming how fast people are dying from the disease, with three deaths in Spokane County in just one week.
But the real issue is why two of these people, a man in his 40's and a woman in her 60's, both with no known health conditions, died recently.
Epidemiologists have said those most at risk are young, 6 to 24 years old. After that, it's only if they have an underlying health condition, like diabetes or asthma.
The district still doesn't have a complete health history of these two people, but says no one really knows yet why the virus is becoming deadly to those that were seemingly fine a week ago.
"Sometimes they have an underlying health condition that is unknown and sometimes they're immune system is compromised, but there's no good way to predict that," said Dr. Joel McCullough, the Health Officer for the Spokane Regional Health District.
McCullough is urging everyone to get the swine flu vaccine. He says it's about 70 to 90-percent effective.
He also noted that even though locally it seems older people are the ones dying from the virus, across the nation McCullough says it's still most deadly among children, as 86 have died so far.
