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Doreen Leavitt, the Kenai Peninsula Public Health nurse manager, is getting asked plenty of questions about the inoculation for the 2009 H1N1 strain of flu, also known as the swine flu.

Some of the questions are normal for this time of year she said. Others however, have come as a result of a charged political environment managing to turn vaccination into a political debate.

"I think we're seeing those polarized concerns here," she said. "We're having a lot of questions wanting more information. But we have some that are polarized that are just anti-vaccine and there's nothing we can do but to give them reliable sources to seek information from."

While there have been plenty of vaccine skeptics, overall Leavitt said interest in getting the vaccine is high in the community.

"Our health center is getting a lot of calls requesting the vaccine, more so than for the requests that we usually see for the annual vaccine," she said.

When more quantities of the vaccine become available, mass inoculations are planned in Kenai Peninsula Borough School District schools for students whose parents have signed permission slips.

Leavitt sees the return of those waivers as an indication of the community's response to the pandemic.

"It's mixed from school to school and age group to age group who's turning in permission slips. Some are turning in more than others," she said. "For the most part the response is overwhelming."

That's a good thing she said.

"When you think about why should I get vaccinated, it's not necessarily to protect you, but to protect others in the community," she said, "such as your grandmother who you visit every weekend or a the baby you baby-sit. It's not just about protecting yourself."

Leavitt's directed skeptics to state and federal government sites in the hope's of swaying them.

She said a many of the concerns she's heard have stemmed from unreliable Web sites touting information about the safety of the vaccine.

Leavitt said the swine flue vaccine is manufactured no differently than the annual influenza vaccine and poses no additional health risks.

Nonetheless, independent health advisers began monitoring the safety of the swine flu vaccine on Monday, an extra step the government promised in this year's unprecedented program to watch for possible side effects. The Associated Press reported on Monday that the systems to track the health of millions of Americans are being tapped to spot any rare but real problems quickly, and to explain the inevitable false alarms when common disorders coincide with inoculation.

U.S. health officials have spotted no concerns to date, Dr. Bruce Gellin, head of the National Vaccine Program Office, told the AP.

Leavitt said some of the more common side effects of getting the swine flu vaccine are similar to those of the annual flu, and may include soreness, tenderness or swelling where the shot was given or headache and muscle ache.

She said those side effects are typically short lived.

Serious side effects will become apparent within minutes to hours of being inoculated she said.

"Of the vaccines we've given, we have not had any serious adverse reports coming back to us," she said.

Another myth Leavitt said she hears frequently is that the vaccine causes the flu.

The flu inside the vaccine is inactivated however, so that's impossible she said.

"It does take two-weeks to develop immunity after getting vaccinated," she said. "If you do get the flu after vaccination it could be because you were exposed or flu during that time or that you develop a strain of influenza you weren't vaccinated against."

Leavitt said there are a number of different strains of flu and not all have vaccinations.

Like the rest of the country, the Health Center has only received limited supplies of the vaccine due to manufacturing woes.

"It's trickling in," Leavitt said. "We don't know when we'll get it, we know we'll get it regularly, weekly, but the amounts, we don't know."

On Monday the AP reported that a senior adviser to President Barack Obama said the government will catch up to the demand for swine flu vaccine within a week.

According to Obama adviser David Axelrod, the manufacturers of the vaccine were wrong when they advised the administration earlier this year that they would have 40 million doses ready near the end of October. Instead, only 28 million doses of vaccine were available.

Axelrod says 10 million more doses are expected to be available this week.

For now only those in "high priority groups" are eligible to receive the swine flu vaccine. Those include pregnant women, people who live with or care for infants younger than 6 months old, health care or emergency personnel, anyone from 6 months of age to 24 years old and anyone aged 25 to 64 who has certain chronic medical conditions or a weakened immune system.

Those who meet the criteria of the high-priority group wishing to get inoculated are first encouraged to contact their care provider. They may also check the availability of vaccines locally by calling the Kenai Peninsula Borough's Hotline for Novel H1N1 Influenza to get the latest quantities of vaccine available locally along with relevant information flu related information at 714-2428.

Leavitt said the hotline is updated every other day.

She also recommended calling the state's Pandemic Influenza Information Hotline at 1-888-9panflu.

For reliable Web sites about the swine flu and the vaccine she said to visit www.cdc.gov, www.pandemicflu.alaska.gov or www.immunize.org.