Editor’s Note: This story is the

second of a two-part series on DeKalb County’s disaster

preparedness.

DeKALB | As part of bioterrorism grant monies, the DeKalb County Health Department administered flu shots with a broader mindset to curtail future hazardous situations.

Christel Springmire, a licensed environmental health practitioner, said the administering of flu shots Thursday at the Holmes Student Center wasn’t a practice drill for a bioterrorism event, but an opportunity for the department to use statistics in relation to the future.

“If there were an event of bioterrorism, we have to treat our entire county population in a specific period of time, as would be stipulated by the federal government,” she said. “If they say we have 48 hours, we’d need to know that we have 100,000 people and approximately how long it would take to inoculate everybody.”

Karen Grush, public health administrator for the DeKalb County Health Department, said this particular flu clinic was used as a meter for the department’s capabilities.

“One of the things we needed to be able to evaluate was, based on the number of staff that we had, how many people we could process through in an hour’s time,” she said. “We needed to determine this so we could determine staffing levels when we do our emergency planning. We knew we’d be able to have a large amount of people going through in a short amount of time.”

Springmire said that by using the Holmes Student Center as a model for estimation, it provided a better comparison to the county because it’s a larger sample venue than a small clinic.

“We did a little over 750 flu shots at the student center for NIU faculty and staff,” she said. “When we looked at our numbers, we figured a nurse could do about 60 shots a minute. Obviously, if we were in an emergency, we’d try to move people along a little bit faster.”

Grush said the health department would be back at the Capitol Room Dec. 7 from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. to administer flu shots. Any Illinois state employee can go to the flu clinic.