Soldiers receiving H1N1 inoculations

The Army’s largest training camp, outside Columbia, S.C., and other posts are hurrying to finish the shots before the year-end break. More than 40,000 soldiers in advanced and basic training across the country head home over the next two weeks in a massive troop movement known as “block leave,’’ Army officials said.

“We have been very aggressive in trying to assure the safety of our soldiers,’’ said Major Soo Hee Kim-Delio, the Army physician in charge of the inoculations at Fort Jackson. “Our basic training population is at particularly high risk.’’

Swine flu, also known as 2009 H1N1, has proved to be similar to seasonal flu but a bigger threat to children and young adults. Many of the trainees are in their late teens and early 20s.

The soldiers are also vulnerable because of the physical stress of basic training and from living at close quarters with hundreds of other recruits, Kim-Delio said. When they return home, they may rub shoulders with a host of relatives or be around children fresh from exposure at school.

Fort Jackson recorded the Army’s first death from complications of swine flu when Specialist Christopher Hogg of Deltona, Fla., died Sept. 10 from pneumonia due to H1N1 influenza, authorities said.

Fort Jackson started the shots about two weeks ago and expects to vaccinate as many as 9,000 soldiers by the end of this week and another 2,000 by the middle of next week. The trainers who remain on post, the Army’s medical workforce, family members, pregnant women, and those with medical conditions such as asthma also will get the shots for a total of about 15,000 doses, Kim-Delio said.

The Department of Defense purchased 2.7 million doses of the H1N1 vaccine, which it is trying to deliver to soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines around the globe before the end of the year.