COVINGTON, La. – The St. Tammany Parish school system will be offering the H1N1 vaccine to all of its students as part of a massive vaccination program that will be offered to school systems around the state.
The vaccine will be offered to students whose parents fill out the proper forms at five locations in December and January.
The vaccine will be available to students with the proper paperwork at the following locations:
Fontainebleau Jr. High – December 5
Northshore High – December 12
Covington High – January 9
Fontainebleau High – January 16
Pearl River High – January 23
The DHH reported two more deaths Tuesday related to the H1N1 Virus, bringing the total number of H1N1-related deaths in Louisiana to 35.
St. Tammany school leaders said the vaccine shots is an effort to get ahead of the next outbreak of the H1N1 flu, since this flu tends to hit children harder.
"It's a huge undertaking to do this for five Saturdays," St. Tammany School Superintendent Gayle Sloan said Tuesday. "With the kind of staffing that we will need to make a go of it, but we thought it was important to step up to be the organizer of this event, as a service to our parents."
Packets to be sent home with students will include a consent form, and facts about the virus and the vaccine.
"We have a lot of susceptible folks in our community," Dr. Parham Jaberi, the Florida Parishes Region Medical Director for the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals said Tuesday. "A lot of young kids who have not gotten the flu this year, and what we can do is vaccinate them and prevent them from getting sick, and prevent them from going home and spreading it to their family members, the elderly family members, the young infants."
"We're providing this as a service," Sloan added. "Parents need to make the decision whether they're going to take advantage of it, our employees too."
DHH leaders call the school-based vaccination program aggressive and huge. "We have done similar events," Dr. Jaberi added. "But definitely nothing as large a scale as we're doing with the H1N1 Vaccine."
St. Tammany is asking that younger students, under nine, come to the December dates, because they require a second shot, which must be more than 28 days later.
