Hundreds Line-Up For Flu Shots

Several hundred people lined up in the cold Monday morning, at the Mother Lode fairgrounds to get a flu shot.

An hour after opening at the Manzanita building, about half of the 400 doses of influenza vaccine had been given out to the folks standing in line. The flu shot clinic was sponsored by Sonora Community Hospital, continued until noon.

We are in the midst of an epidemic here in Tuolumne County,” Dr. Todd Stolp with the county health department said. About 10 percent of folks getting checked for flu like symptoms are showing positive for the influenza A virus.

The health department chief doesn´t think the county is experiencing a critical shortage of the flu vaccine like other parts of the country: “The fact that we vaccinated more numbers of people than ever before is certainly a positive,” he said. “So in that sense, it´s hard to describe it as a shortage.”

The Tuolumne County Health Department is now out of vaccine after giving out more than twenty four hundred shots.