Knox County Health Department (KCHD), after assessing the needs of its numerous community health care partners, is now making its supplies of H1N1 intranasal mist vaccine available to the public. KCHD has not received delivery of injectable H1N1 vaccine (flu shots) to date. The intranasal H1N1 mist is a live attenuated influenza vaccine (LAIV), which has been deemed safe by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is approved for healthy non-pregnant people between the ages of 2 and 49 years old and those for whom they care. During this first wave of vaccines, KCHD and the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommend these priority target groups for vaccination, based upon their burden of disease and risk of serious illness:

Everyone ages 2 years through 24 years; Persons living with or caring for infants less than 6 months old; and All health care workers and emergency services personnel.

KCHD has H1N1 intranasal vaccine available at no cost, and offers the following additional information:

1) Of the group eligible to take H1N1 intranasal vaccine, the only people that should not receive LAIV are those who work with the severely immunosuppressed. That includes patients who require special living conditions to reduce the risk of infection.

2) All other people can receive a LAIV and return to work immediately without posing a risk to those for whom they care, even those who work with very young children (including newborn infants) or pregnant women.

There is no risk of developing the flu from a live virus vaccine. NO cases of flu have been linked to receiving LAIV.

More flu information is available at www.flu.gov or by calling 211 or the Tennessee Department of Health Flu Information Line at 1-877-252-3432.