More important than ever to get your vaccines, doctors warn
Physicians know how to keep you and your kids safe from COVID-19
It’s understandable that we all fear visiting doctors’ offices during this pandemic. But now more than ever, it’s important to keep getting yourself and your kids vaccinations against dangerous diseases like measles and meningitis.
While we don’t yet have hard numbers, it’s safe to say there has been a massive drop-off in visits to pediatricians and family doctors for routine shots in the past two months, in the period before protective personal equipment (PPE) was being recommended during immunization. Now that PPE is recommended and available, people can return to getting their vaccines.
But not enough people are getting the message.
Figures from the U.S. show vaccinations have dropped by more than half. If it’s anything close in Canada, that’s a major problem: History shows even diseases like polio can come back once we let our guard down.
The world is waiting with baited breath for the COVID-19 vaccine that will allow life to return to normal. It would be a bitter irony if fear of one communicable disease led to the return of many others.
Let’s not let that happen. Now is the time to get your vaccines up to date.
In doctor’s offices and clinics, pre-screening is done carefully to avoid COVID-19 exposure, and health-care providers wear PPE, including gloves, masks and gowns, to allow you or your child to get vaccinated safely. But if you are still concerned, call them do discuss what they are doing to keep patients and their families safe. We think you will be reassured by the protocols in place.
Here is a checklist of questions you can ask your provider about infection control practices in their office, based on Canadian Pediatric Society COVID-19 guidelines:
Do you pre-screen each patient?
Are ‘well’ visits (for shots and other routine check-ups) scheduled at a different time from sick visits?
Have you removed toys from the waiting room?
Do you ask all patients to use hand sanitizer when they enter your office?
How do you ensure physical distancing in your practice?
You may be thinking you can delay your children’s vaccines until a “safer” time. But a long body of research shows delays may lead to vaccines being missed, improperly provided, or working less effectively. Children who miss out on vaccines at the recommended time are more likely to miss out forever, as that dose is often forgotten.
Our children have already borne a heavy load: missing education, physical activity, and social development. We owe it to our kids to protect them against diseases by providing the vaccines we have now.
But it’s not just kids. Pregnant women also need access to vaccination in their third trimester. Seniors are particularly vulnerable, and need vaccination against influenza, shingles and pneumococcal disease to keep them healthy.
Even before this pandemic arrived, there were strong indications the immunization system needed re-engineering in Canada. Ontario is failing to meet all but one of its targets, but still we wait for kids to start school before checking whether they’ve been fully vaccinated — years too late. If we stay strongly behind on vaccination, it’s depressingly predictable that outbreaks of diseases such as measles will have already happened by the time this year’s COVID-19 babies start school.
Action is needed now. Please spread the word among your friends and parent groups that we need to keep immunizing.
Our children rightly expect us to do what we can to protect their futures. No one wants to be explaining to the children of COVID-19 that we didn’t do enough for them.
Dr. Natasha Crowcroft is a professor of clinical public health and epidemiology at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health, and the founding director of U of T’s Centre for Vaccine Preventable Diseases.
Dr. Steven Moss is an associate professor of pediatrics and a physician at the Hospital for Sick Children (SickKids). Doctors’ Notes is a personal health column by U of T faculty members.