OGDEN,Utah (ABC4 News) Over the past 48 hours, Weber-Morgan Health District officials have handed out 8000 doses of the rare H1N1 vaccine to students and others at Weber State University. This mass clinic was the largest university-based clinic so far in the state of Utah during this swine flu pandemic. It started on Monday and ended at 1 o'clock Tuesday afternoon and was open to the public, but was designed to target the student population which is in the high priority category for getting the virus.
Valerie Gooder is a nursing instructor at Weber State who was in the Dee Events center administering the shots. She said, "these students go all over. It's a commuter campus. they go out and work and they have families...we certainly don't want the flu to be a big problem on campus."
Several students who came on Tuesday to get the shot told stories of how the swine flu has touched their families already. Stephanie Holmes said, "My husbands brother had the swine flu and he was in a lot of pain and it was bad, so I thought I should get it (the vaccination)."
One other reason that the special university clinic is so important here at Weber State is the recent death of professor Diane Pugmire due to complications from the H1N1 virus. Nurse Gooder told ABC4's Ross Becker, "I think that anytime there is somebody that is close to the community that would die of something like the H1N1 it would make it more visable in the community and rather than have that big six degrees of separation then it's like one degree of separation and it makes people concerned."
The Weber Morgan Health District now claims it has no more vaccine available in November, but is planning another mass clinic at the county fairgrounds for December. The ABC4 News Vaccine Tracker will have more details soon.
