Two reported deaths this week related to the swine flu have no-doubt heightened concerns for many area families. The H1N1 vaccine will be ready soon, but local health professionals are now saying the first batch that arrives will only be a limited number of doses.

The large amount of doses of the swine flu vaccine won't be coming. Instead it will be a small number at first.

Driscoll Children's Hospital has been inundated with swine flu patients coming to their emergency room to get treatment.

"We have had an increase since the summer: May, June, July, August, September and when school opened even more cases," Dr. Jaime Fergie, an infectiotious disease doctor at Driscoll Children's Hospital. 

More than 250 patients are coming in on average day to Driscoll Children's Hospital. So the hospital will start bringing the patients to this auditorium to help the process go faster.

"They open a new triage area so where a patient can go to make it realistic so the people can go faster into the ER and people with influenza can go into other area and then they can be seen," Dr. Fergie said. 

Health leaders are advising patients to go see their peditrician first or call the Swine Flu hotline at 211.

"The best thing is still to talk to your pedeitrician," said Annette Rodriguez, Interim Director for the City-County Health Department in Nueces County. "So talk to them because they'll give you good guidance on what we need to do to get those kids healthy and back to school."

Soon, a swine flu vaccine will be available for patients.

"Well, the vaccine for all the studies that have been done it's working very well, so the protection afforded by the vaccine appears to be very high," said Dr. Fergie. 

The first doses of the vaccine will arrive in mid-October that will be a nasal spray version for children,

Initially, the number of doses were expected to be high, but now it will be a smaller number. Doctors and hospitals will get the vaccine with an extra 100 vaccines being stored with the health department for emergency situations.

"What the state is doing and the federal government is doing as soon as they're ready, they're rolling them out to us," Rodriguez said. 

More vaccines are expected to come as soon as its ready.

--Manuel De La Rosa, 3News, mdelarosa@kiiitv.com