School nurses and health aides are among the very first Quad-City residents who have been vaccinated against the pandemic H1N1 virus, and Carol Harris couldn't be happier.

"I am thrilled to see this get going," said Harris, the head nurse for the Davenport School District. She and more than a dozen of the district's other nurses and aides reported for a vaccination clinic at 7 a.m. Friday at J.B. Young Intermediate School.

The Scott County Health Department launched H1N1 vaccination clinics one day after receiving 600 doses of the FluMist vaccine. Sites chosen for the initial clinics were the media center at J.B. Young for Davenport's school nurses and aides, and there also were clinics for Bettendorf, North Scott and Pleasant Valley School districts nurses and aides.

Scott County's initial batch of vaccine is among 18,000 shipped this week to 93 Iowa counties. Vaccine deliveries are expected weekly, and there eventually will be plenty of it available, officials say.

In Illinois, some 57,000 FluMist doses were shipped directly to the places that ordered it. Rock Island County has about 60 sites that will handle the H1N1 vaccination program, but no clinics have been held so far.

Most of the H1N1 vaccine will be the inactive form, which is given as an inoculation in the arm. The live vaccine in the FluMist form is a well-accepted alternative, said Roma Taylor, clinical services coordinator for the Scott County Health Department.

Harris gets a vaccination against the seasonal flu every year. She is one of the folks coordinating the large H1N1 inoculation effort that will involve many thousands of Quad-City students and is tentatively set for November.

"We are as ready as we can be," she said.

Sheri Simpson-Schultz, the principal at Wood Intermediate School in Davenport, was one of the first in line for a vaccination. "I work with kids, so I'm trying to do what I think is best," she said of her decision to get vaccinated.

Also in line was Pam Raabe, a health aide at Lincoln Elementary School. She usually gets a seasonal flu shot and thinks the H1N1 vaccination is also a good idea. "I don't want to take any virus home to my family," she said.

Small clinics are set for the community's first responders such as paramedics and firefighters. "Now that we have the vaccine, it's important to get it out there," Taylor said.