The Middlesex-London Health Unit will hold its first on-campus H1N1 vaccination clinic on Saturday at the Althouse Faculty of Education Building for high-risk groups.
The clinic will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the gym. Parking is free.
Persons eligible for the vaccine include:
Individuals under the age of 65 with underlying medical conditions;
Persons living in a household with children under the age of six months;
Anyone living with someone who has problems with their immune system;
Children between the ages of six months and less than five years of age;
Pregnant women with underlying medical conditions or healthy women who are more than 20 weeks pregnant; and Health-care workers.
Bring a driver’s license or health card to the clinic for identification. More clinics are expected but dates have yet to be determined.
Check the Middlesex-London Health Unit website (healthunit.com) for the most up-to-date information on clinics and who is eligible for the vaccine. More information is also available on Western’s H1N1 microsite at https://communications.uwo.ca/influenza-microsite/.
Data collected through Western’s online absence reporting tools indicates the number of students and campus employees staying home due to flu-like illness remains stable.
“We’ve been closely monitoring student and employee absences since early October, and we are not seeing any significant spike in the numbers of those self-reporting flu-like illness so far,” says Gitta Kulczycki, Vice-President (Resources and Operations) and chair of the university’s Emergency Operations Control Group.
On any given day, approximately 500 students are reporting absences due to flu-like illness. This is a small percentage of the 30,000 students on campus, says Kulczycki.
Unlike in the past, when reporting absences was decentralized, the new tool has helped Western monitor illness trends.
“It does give us glimpse on what those trends look like, which I would say are very stable and, relatively speaking, low in terms of people reporting influenza-like illness.
“It appears the measures people are taking across campus to minimize the possibility of infection are making a difference, and we encourage everyone to continue with good hygiene practices, such as regular hand-washing and use of hand sanitizer, and coughing or sneezing into your sleeve,” she adds.
Director of Student Health Services Shelagh Bantock says about 10 per cent of those reporting to Student Health Services have symptoms of influenza-like illness, “which is still pretty low and very normal for this time of year.”
Although there have been five influenza-related deaths in the local area in November, a report Monday from the health unit says there appears to be a decline in influenza activity in the Middlesex-London community.
