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The swine flu vaccination clinic set for Friday will still go on as planned, even though the call center contracted to take appointments failed to live up to expectations.

Dr. Barbara A. Brookmyer, health officer with the Frederick County Health Department, said the Florida-based call center began taking appointments at 9 a.m. Wednesday morning.

By 9:02 a.m., the call center had been overwhelmed with calls. By 10 a.m., it had logged somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 calls, Brookmyer said.

Brookmyer assumed the 260-280 call-takers the call center allotted would be enough to handle the 800 appointments available for Friday's clinic, but demand far exceeded expectations.

She said the call center was chosen because of problems in other jurisdictions in the state, where health department staff was insufficient to handle the call volume. She also said the department wanted to avoid people waiting in line overnight for Friday's clinic, as has happened elsewhere.

She said it was possible that some of the appointment slots were not filled, but the call center had kept to its goal of making appointments in the order the calls came in. Even though many calls did not get through to a representative, the data systems recorded the order in which calls were made. Representatives called those numbers back in the order they came in, Brookmyer said.

She said Frederick County Health Department would not decide whether to continue using the call center for future clinics until after all the data was in.

"We need to assess whether there is technology that has the capacity to better respond to the call volume that was experienced today," she said.

The department would consider future clinics after Friday.

H1N1 Clinic

Nov. 6, 10 a.m. - 2 p.m.

By appointment only

Church of the Redeemer, at 5606 Buckeystown Pike in Frederick

For more information, call the Health Department's Flu Clinic Information Line at 301-600-3035 or visit the Web site at www.frederickcountymd.gov/fluclinics.

E-mail Christian Brown at Chbrown@gazette.net.