Children are falling behind on their routine immunizations, and this is a problem that is concerning medical experts everywhere. Vaccines are an important part of a child’s health, and they are helping to ensure that preventable illnesses are avoided, and hopefully eradicated. They have been keeping children safe for decades now, but the pandemic may have put a hold on their usage. The pandemic saw the delay of a lot of well-visits for children, due to wanting to slow the spread, and this means that children have missed their regular vaccines.
According to Scary Mommy, as many have suspected, children are falling behind on their immunizations. This was reported to Politico by pediatricians, school nurses, immunization advocates, state officials, and other public health officials in over 10 different states. The missing vaccines are for measles, chickenpox, and meningitis.
Experts are concerned about children being able to catch up on their vaccines, but they now have a new concern. They are concerned that the hesitancy they are seeing from parents in regard to the COVID-19 vaccine is now being applied to all vaccines. This could mean that even more children will start to miss their vaccines, and that could be a real threat to public health.
When large groups of children do not get vaccinated, there is a risk that these illnesses could make a comeback, and that puts a lot of people at risk. It can put high-risk and immunocompromised people at risk, as well as infants and children who are too young to receive the vaccine.
Hugo Scornik is a pediatrician, and he stated that they just want to make sure that measles, polio, and other illnesses do not come back into society. It has also been found that the vaccine rates are lowest in states that actively fought against all the pandemic mandates.
For example, they used the state of Florida. The Florida Department of Health made a statement that children from the ages of 5 to 17 years old “may not benefit” from the COVID-19 vaccine. After that statement, the rate of 2-year-olds who were vaccinated went from 92.1% to 79.3% and this is what experts are worried about.
As of right now, we have not seen any outbreaks of preventable illnesses, but the experts state that if these rates remain low, it is only “a matter of time” before we start to see outbreaks of measles and other illnesses.
Sources: Scary Mommy, Politico