By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
Flu season is getting closer, and everyone is encouraged to get their flu shot to begin building up those antibodies to be protected.
The Doniphan County Health Department will hold its annual drive-thru flu clinic on October 6th.
Health Director Sheryl Pierce says the drive-thru clinic originally started 15 years ago as a test to prepare for large dispensing in the case of a pandemic.
"So, it was kind of an exercise initially," Pierce tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. "Well, it caught on so well and the public liked it so well that we got a lot of feedback that wanted us to continue to do it, because typically what we were going to do was a drive-thru one year and then the following year we go to all the schools and all the senior centers, but it's become more of a drive-thru every year."
Pierce says people enjoy the clinic because of the convenience of being able to drive up, get their shot, and be on their way.
"We've got it down to a pretty good science, I don't think you're in a wait line usually over two to three minutes, it's a long day it's 9am to 6pm so we can catch people over their lunch hour, we can catch pretty much every shift you're working with that drive-thru," Pierce says.
Pierce encourages everyone to fill out the consent form prior to get through the line faster. The form can be found around Doniphan County at post offices and banks.
As flu season approaches it is vitally important to get out and get a flu shot prior to the start.
Pierce says the flu causes several deaths each year.
"We certainly want to protect our elderly and our immunocompromised and our young children," Pierce explains. "It does take a couple of weeks to build up the antibodies also to the vaccine so, if you are going to be around folks or know you have a surgery coming up, we certainly recommend you get it a couple of weeks before that if you're going to be around high-risk people."