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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) – The vaccinations American schoolchildren need to get to keep terrible diseases like polio, measles, tetanus and pertussis under control are well overdue this year, threatening further complications for an already school year spoiled by COVID-19.
The lag was caused by pandemic-related disruptions last year in routine doctor visits, summer camps and sports camps where children typically get vaccinated.
Today, pediatricians and educators are scrambling to ensure that arrears do not prevent children from going to school or make them vulnerable to contagious diseases.
“It’s a big deal,” said Richard Long, executive director of the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of educational organizations that has organized a public awareness campaign. “We’re going to have children who will get seriously ill this fall, and the sad part is, for the most part, it’s preventable.”
The number of non-influenza vaccines ordered and administered through the federal Children’s Vaccines program, which covers about half of Americans under the age of 18 and serves as a barometer of national trends, plummeted after former President Donald Trump declared a national emergency in March 2020, a review by the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A subsequent review of 10 jurisdictions, released in June, showed that, despite the doses administered again approaching pre-pandemic levels last fall, they “did not increase to the level that would have been necessary to catch up with the children who were have not received routine vaccinations on time. “
A full calculation for schools is still weeks off, when grace periods that allow unvaccinated children to go to school temporarily begin to expire across the country.
But the latest wave of COVID-19 linked to the delta variant has added new hurdles – including flooded doctors’ offices and clinics, and even potential shortages of drug vials, syringes and needles – to the vortex of confusion and fatigue already faced by those working to tackle the backlog, health and pharmaceutical experts said.
Dr Melinda Wharton, director of the CDC’s immunization services division, said political rhetoric and misinformation around COVID-19 vaccines isn’t helping either.
“In many communities, we polarize vaccines: either you believe in vaccines or you don’t believe in vaccines. And we lump a lot of perspectives and issues into an artificial dichotomy, ”she said. “This worries me a lot.”
Dr. Sara “Sally” Goza, outgoing president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said her practice in Fayetteville, Ga., Was inundated with families who needed to keep up to date with their injections. This caused a backlog of patients heading to the first day of school in early August.
“In fact, we’ve even had patients from other pediatricians calling us,” she said, “because I guess they’ve been told we’re somehow magically able to make them work. people and contact them when their doctors cannot to bring them in.
And some parents remain complacent, experts said – either because they are vaccine skeptics or because they are exhausted by the pandemic and come from a generation unfamiliar with the ravages of diseases like polio.
“You just have our general population saying, ‘I’m tired of thinking about medical issues. I wanna be on vacation, I wanna be outside, I wanna go to shore, whatever, “Wharton said. “So getting a non-COVID vaccine doesn’t seem like the highest priority for people.”
When the Pennsylvania Department of Health last week reminded parents to add their children’s routine immunizations to back-to-school checklists, the comments section became confused with a debate about vaccines COVID-19 and the mask warrants.
Even those who agreed to be shot looked tired. “It gets ridiculous with you people,” one parent remarked. “It’s a bit difficult when you can’t get an appointment until after school starts!” writes another.
State education and health departments have joined efforts with local districts to increase information sharing on vaccines and opportunities for children to get vaccinated, and governors – including Republican of Maryland Larry Hogan and Kansas Democrat Laura Kelly – this month raised National Immunization Awareness Month. as a means of strengthening compliance.
The Learning First Alliance’s Power to Protect vaccination campaign, supported by the national PTA and teacher unions, provided information to principals, teachers, school nurses and support staff such as school drivers. buses and concierges on vaccines that students of different ages need and where to go. them.
“Nudging and cheering is really the role here,” the group advised in a June tweet shared by the American Federation of Teachers and others.
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