H1N1 continues to march across province More people admitted to hospital BY JAMES MCLEOD The Telegram

People line up at the Eastern Health flue assessment clinic on Ropewalk Lane in St. John's Thursday. — Photo by Barb Sweet/The Telegram

In what has become a grim daily event, Health Minister Jerome Kennedy and Faith Stratton, the province’s chief medical officer of health, again updated the public on the spread of the H1N1 flu outbreak.
As of 8 a.m. Thursday, 29 new people had been admitted to hospitals, four of them in intensive care.
In total, the province has 12 people on ventilators, 28 people in intensive care and 85 in hospital.
Kennedy said that they’re on track to finish vaccinating the primary school students in the central, western and Labrador-Grenfell regions by the end of today.
Because of the sheer number of students in the eastern region — about 8,000 — their vaccinations will likely extend into the weekend and next week.
Kennedy indicated that some time today officials will make the decision whether they’ll be calling some students in on the weekend to vaccinate them.
However, he said the doctors and nurses who have been vaccinating for more than a week straight might be running out of stamina.
“It looks like right now Sunday may very well be an off day to give our health-care workers — especially our public health nurses — a break,” Kennedy said.
The process of vaccinating the population against swine flu has been fraught with shortages and problems. Kennedy said the next shipment of vaccine will likely be around 27,000 doses, less than the 30,000 previously expected.
Kennedy said he has been receiving — and trying to personally respond to — floods of e-mails to his office, many with specific, personal concerns of high-risk people who couldn’t get the vaccine.
Meanwhile, in Arnold’s Cove, about 80 high school students decided to send the minister a message another way.
About 80 students walked out of school Thursday morning protesting the fact that inmates at Her Majesty’s Penitentiary had received vaccine before the students did.
Stratton defended the decision saying prisoners typically have addictions issues, chronic disease and immunity issues like HIV which make them a higher risk of death.
“People who are in prison settings have a number of risk factors that would put them at high risk for developing H1N1 infection and then the complications of that,” she said.

jmcleod@thetelegram.com