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Ten calls per minute flooded a county hotline for pregnant women to reserve an H1N1 vaccine dose at a flu clinic scheduled for today. In 25 minutes on Monday afternoon, all 250 injectable doses were taken.

The flu clinic is the county's latest effort to get the vaccine to groups especially vulnerable to H1N1, known as swine flu, including people with serious health conditions, health care workers and parents with young children.

Even federal government entities such as the National Institutes of Health find themselves playing the waiting game. The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene has said some clinics may want to consider requiring people to make appointments for the vaccine, so that they do not wait for hours on line only to be told that the clinic is out of vaccine.

"It is extremely difficult when you've got a high demand and limited supply," said David Paulson, a spokesman with the state health department.

So far, the priority populations for early H1N1 vaccine delivery total 2.9 million in Maryland, according to Paulson. These include young people age 6 months to 24 years old, parents or caretakers of children 6 months old or younger, adults age 25 to 64 with serious chronic health issues, and health care and emergency medical workers.

The department has been able to obtain about 570,000 doses for the state, and slightly less than 500,000 have been shipped and received. Out of the available vaccines, 60 percent are provided to doctors and other health care providers, 25 percent go to county health departments, 10 percent to hospitals, and 5 percent to universities and colleges.

Montgomery County is receiving the largest number of H1N1 doses, since it is the largest county in Maryland by population, Paulson said.

At an Oct. 21 county clinic for H1N1 vaccine, county Department of Health and Human Services spokeswoman Mary Anderson said the county turned away "a lot" of pregnant women because it only had 250 injectable doses of the vaccine. It is recommended that pregnant women get the injectable vaccine rather than the nasal spray. Vaccination clinics scheduled for Nov. 4, Nov. 11 and Nov. 18 at three county schools were canceled last week due to uncertainty over H1N1 vaccine supply.

No county vaccination clinics have been scheduled after today's clinic for pregnant women.

"People are definitely frustrated," Anderson said.

The county's Web site for H1N1 is http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/

mcgtmpl.asp?url=/content/exec/swine_flu/index.asp.

The county did distribute 3,000 doses of nasal spray for children and young adults for H1N1 on Oct. 28 at three county high schools. Patiently shuffling toward the front of the line at Germantown's Northwest High School was North Potomac resident Sean Wu with his 5-year-old daughter Amanda. Wu was concerned for his wife, who is pregnant and is due in about one month, as well as for Amanda.

"I want to get the family protected," Wu said.

Officials said roughly 400 people were turned away after the doses ran out. Although the vaccine was targeted for young people age 2 to 24, the site administrator Mindy McCartin said if adults up to age 49 asked for the nasal spray they would not be turned down.

At the 21 branches of the county's public library system, hand sanitizer is either available already or will be soon, but no plans are in place yet to clean public computer terminals because of practical considerations, said county spokeswoman Bonnie Ayers.

Both Metro subway cars and buses are being cleaned with disinfectant on a weekly basis to help guard against H1N1, said Joan LeLacheur, deputy chief of environmental management and industrial hygiene for the Washington Metro Area Transit Administration. Prior to October, buses were cleaned every two weeks, while subway cars were cleaned once a month. Stations are receiving daily treatments of disinfectant.

"We're going to keep going until the vaccine is widely available," LeLacheur said.

At the National Institutes of Health campus in Bethesda, the highest priority for H1N1 is the 4,000 employees who have face-to-face contact with patients. So far, NIH has only had enough doses to administer 600 vaccinations to employees and contract workers, according to Dr. James Schmitt, the medical director of NIH's Occupational Medical Service.

A total of 30,000 people work for NIH, and the Bethesda campus receives more than 1,000 visits a day. A contingency plan originally developed for the avian flu is in place to screen visitors at the campus perimeter if the H1N1 situation worsens, although no visitor screenings are taking place currently.

Across the street at the National Naval Medical Center, the Department of Defense is supposed to release H1N1 vaccine to active military personnel in the coming weeks. About 200 doses of the H1N1 vaccine on average have been administered daily to non-active personnel and civilians, said Capt. Margan Zajdowicz, director of public health services at Navy Med. There are approximately 8,000 workers on Navy Med's campus, 4,000 of them working at the hospital.

"We are seeing some increase in our primary care areas," Zajdowicz said, referring to the frequency of flu symptoms compared to past years.