On Friday morning, the waiting room of Rocky Mountain Urgent Care's Boulder clinic was packed with pregnant women and small children.

The facility was hosting a swine flu vaccination clinic, which attracted people from across the county who have been waiting for weeks to find a place that had the shots in stock.

Rachel Swetz, who's pregnant, has been calling her obstetrician's office -- but the doctor never seemed to have it in. Her husband heard about the clinic at Rocky Mountain Urgent Care and insisted that Swetz go.

Elizabeth Embry, a health care worker with a compromised immune system, had all but lost hope.

"I had just assumed I would never get the shot," she said.

The clinic opened its doors at 8 a.m. Friday with a little more than 100 shots. People with stories similar to Swetz's and Embry's flooded the office, and the vaccines were gone before noon.

Despite the seemingly slow drip of vaccines into the county, and then onto private clinics, Boulder County Public Health estimates that about half of the people in the county who are at the highest risk of having serious medical problems if they contract the swine flu have been vaccinated.

So far, Boulder County has received 19,000 doses of swine flu vaccine, about 90 percent of which have been allocated to hospitals and private health care providers, said Chana Goussetis, a spokeswoman for the county's health department.

The department also estimates that only about 75 percent of people in the highest-risk categories -- pregnant women, people who live with babies younger than 6 months, children 6 months to 4 years, children 5 to 18 years who have chronic health concerns, and health care workers in direct contact with patients -- want to get vaccinated.

Boulder County is on track to hit that 75 percent mark in the next week or two, Goussetis said, and then the vaccines will be made available to people in lower-risk categories, starting with healthy people who are 5 to 24 years old and then 25- to 64-year-olds with underlying health conditions.

People in the high-risk groups who still want to get vaccinated should first call their regular doctors, Goussetis said. If their doctors don't have the vaccine, or if they have no regular health care provider, then they should check with the county.

Nationwide, only about a third of adults who have tried to get a swine flu vaccine have been able to, according to a new poll from the Harvard School of Public Health.

The telephone poll also found that half of those who tried couldn't find information about where to get the vaccine. The survey of 1,000 adults was conducted last weekend, and the results were released Friday.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Contact Camera Staff Writer Laura Snider at 303-473-1327 or sniderl@dailycamera.com.