Photo courtesy of Ben Chau at Flickr.com

After President Barack Obama declared the H1N1 emergency, many people fled to vaccination providers only to find they had ran out. As a result the vaccination providers have been playing catch up. But just this morning, as I was watching Good Morning America, they announced that 24.8 million doses of the Swine Flu vaccination will now available for shipment.

Because students have the greatest likelihood of catching part of the epidemic, everyone should find a health care provider to nip this in the bud before it spreads and turns into a zombie movie, where everyone is quarantined and social networking sites are overloaded with H1N1 status updates. I think many of us have already seen truth in this statement.

On Wednesday, the Utah Department of Health reported four more swine flu-related deaths, one a female between the age of 5 and 24 from Utah County, with numbers of reported flu cases jumping from 130 to 404 in the past week. This now makes 12 swine flu-related deaths since August 30th. The Utah Department of Health attributes these recent deaths to the state shortage of vaccinations.

Hopefully this new shipment of vaccinations will prevent death rates from increasing locally and nationally.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that in Region 8 of the United States, which includes: Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah and Wyoming, the number of reported cases of the flu has elevated 32.4%, under their weekly surveillance disclosures.

For reasons such as these, BYU has been proactive in reducing the spread of viral germs by exponentially supplying hand sanitizer in each building, face masks at the Testing Center and Internet resources on its home page. But most importantly, they encourage people to stay at home and get medical attention if they believe they have the symptoms of the swine flu.

As of yesterday, ABC 4 vaccine tracker reported that vaccinations are currently unavailable, but that health clinics are hoping to receive a new shipment on Tuesday in Utah County. Keep an eye out for this and be prepared to be the first in line.