With demand up, it can be a chore to find a flu shot.
My family and I spent the better part of one weekend driving to grocers, drugstores and retailers -- even a hospital -- in search of advertised vaccinations. Everywhere we went was out of shots.
Google has pledged to make the hunt easier. The search engine is offering maps to locations offering seasonal flu and H1N1 shots.
Visit google.com/flushot and type in your ZIP Code or city and state. H1N1 shot locations pop up in blue, seasonal shots in red. Locations with both seasonal and H1N1 shots show up in a mix of red and blue.
Putting in 90802, the ZIP Code for much of downtown Long Beach, refers searchers to the city Health Department, 2525 Grand Ave. Room 145, where seasonal vaccines are offered to various populations.
Also popping up in red in the downtown Long Beach search is a CVS Pharmacy just over the Orange County line at 921 Pacific Coast Highway, Seal Beach.
A search in Downey pulls up the Downey Civic Theatre, 8435 Firestone Blvd., Downey, which is offering a public H1N1 clinic from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday. Type in Lakewood, Calif. and the Downey clinic appears.
Google coordinated the effort with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to news reports.
Some checking of search results is required. Just because a site offers clinics that show in a search does not mean that vaccines are in stock. It makes sense to call ahead.
The swine flu pandemic has claimed about 3,900 Americans -- about 540 of them children, according to CDC numbers released Thursday.
The next city of Long Beach flu shot clinics are 3:30 to 7:30 p.m Tuesday at Wilson High School and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 21 at Millikan High.
