Routine Vaccinations Skipped During the Pandemic May Be Coming Back to Haunt Us Now

Well-care visits to healthcare providers essentially ceased during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. That included routine vaccination for children. It wasn’t much of a threat for a while, as kids had little face-to-face interaction with anyone outside their family, thereby lowering risk of any infectious disease. Now, however, healthcare officials are concerned that a measles outbreak in the Midwest United States could be the harbinger of a national or even global emergency. As reported by JAMA Network, the 73 confirmed cases of measles in Ohio (36% of which required hospitalization) and 22 unrelated cases in Minnesota this year could be representative of what’s coming elsewhere. The report quotes data from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicating that almost 40 million children missed a measles vaccine dose—25 million missing their first dose and 14.7 million missing their second dose. The message to the urgent care community is twofold: First, probe parents to learn whether their children have gaps in their vaccine coverage and offer to get them up to date and second, prepare for what could be a sharp increase in children presenting with symptoms that could be related to measles infection. JUCM published an article that could be helpful in this regard. You can read Unexpected Viral Illness in an Urgent Care Setting: The Re-Emergence of Mumps, Measles, and Varicella in our archive right now.