For more information: www.maine.gov/dhhs/boh/maineflu/
LEWISTON — To help protect communities, Maine schools should give flu shots to students this year and every year, Maine’s top doctor recommended Thursday.
For the first time this year, health officials are recommending flu vaccines for everyone except infants 6 months and younger, said Dr. Dora Anne Mills, head of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC is giving vaccines and equipment to schools, Mills said. Vaccines will be free to students.
The state will not provide schools with money to administer the shots but will provide enough vaccine for staff, as well as students. Some of the vaccine is already being delivered to schools. “We expected to get it all out this month or early November,” Mills said.
Lewiston and Auburn schools, along with many others, will give flu vaccines to students, administrators said Thursday.
Lewiston schools will set up clinics and will offer both nasal spray and the regular vaccine in late October or early November, said Lewiston High School nurse Patrice Rossini. All Lewiston schools will offer the vaccines during school. They will be administered with the help of volunteers.
In Auburn, vaccines will be offered from 3 to 7 p.m. Monday, Nov. 8, and Wednesday, Nov. 10, at Edward Little High School, Superintendent Tom Morrill said.
The H1N1 flu was a pandemic last year, Mills said. It is still around but less of a threat. This year’s flu vaccine will be a three-in-one dose, covering the H1N1 strain and two seasonal strains, Mills said.
So far, more than 150 schools have signed up to give students flu vaccines, Mills said. Last year’s school vaccine clinics were considered successful, she said. “We had the highest vaccine rate in the country.”
Maine also had the mildest H1N1 surge in the nation, among children, Mills said. One reason was the school vaccines, she said. Statewide, more than 60 percent of Maine students in schools that offered vaccines got them. That reduced exposure to students who didn’t get the shots and it protected elders in nursing homes, Mills said.
“We know children are the major transmitters of flu throughout a community,” she said. “When you look at the elderly heavily impacted by the flu, they get it from kids. Kids bring the flu virus home. Mom works as a certified nursing assistant at a nursing home. Dad visits his mother in a nursing home.”
Some schools are declining the vaccines because the schools don’t have adequate nursing staff to administer the vaccines, Mills said. “If they have one school nurse, I understand. I wish all schools would do it.”
Auburn does not have enough school nurses to offer clinics in every school, and will use volunteers to hold the clinics for all students at the high school, said Assistant Superintendent Katy Grondin. “We’re working to meet the needs of all our students within our means,” she said.
bwashuk@sunjournal.com
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