Vaccines, Pediatric Visits Lower Amid Pandemic

Maintain Children’s Check-Ups

By Mark Fishaut, MD and William F. House, MD, Eventide Health

As the number of positive COVID-19 cases in children surpassed 1 million, pediatricians continue to grapple with the pandemic’s impact on their patients, practice, work-life balance and finances.

Fortunately, severe illness due to COVID-19 remains rare in children, with 133 pediatric deaths nationally through mid-November.

However, the pandemic has taken a toll on the health of children, families, communities, physicians and frontline medical teams in other ways.

Widespread concern has been shared by nearly all pediatricians surveyed nationally about the pandemic’s social and financial impact on their practice community. Many commented that families are hard hit by financial and medical stress, and patients need help connecting with mental health services and other resources.

Pediatricians are experiencing high stress in their professional and personal lives during the pandemic, too. Especially in rural areas like ours around the country, numerous small pediatric and family practices have permanently closed leaving huge gaps in child care that may never be restored.

As the coronavirus pandemic upends the daily life of all of us, families must continue to follow public health recommendations by staying at home and limiting contact with others whenever possible. But an unintended negative consequence of the pandemic is the news that up to 80 percent of American children are not visiting their pediatricians’ offices right now and are missing out on routine well-child visits that include important developmental screenings and vaccinations.

We too at Eventide Health have seen a similar drop in well-child and young adult visits despite our island’s having avoided the worst of the pandemic thus far.

We fully understand and empathize with parents who fear contact, particularly in a health care setting, but also feeling concerned about the repercussions of their children missing out on regular check-ups and falling behind on the vaccination schedule.

Routine well-child visits are needed now more than ever:

Dr. Sally Goza president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, explains, “It’s critical for parents to realize that we need those exams done…we know there is a lot going on and regular issues still crop up, whether we have a pandemic or not.”

AAP strongly supports continued health care for children, including in-person well-child visits when possible and virtual visits through telehealth when necessary.

Amid the pandemic, vaccines are still critical in order to prevent further health concerns:

From 1994 to 2016, childhood immunizations prevented an estimated 281 million child illnesses, 855,000 child deaths, and nearly $1.65 trillion in health care costs. But the number of vaccines administered dropped by at least 40 percent between February and April of this year. If our vaccination rates drop, then we are at risk to have another measles outbreak or a whooping cough outbreak.

Or if it is a young child that does not get their meningitis vaccine, they could get meningitis, which we haven’t seen much in many years. Vaccines are critical even and especially now in order to keep children safe from preventable diseases and prevent the added crisis of a preventable outbreak amid the ongoing pandemic.

The challenges and choices parents must make every day during this pandemic are certainly not easy. As you are trying to determine what is best for you and your family, you can read more about the impacts of COVID-19 on child health at the AAP’s parent education site Healthychildren.org.

Eventide Health has worked extremely hard to keep our office as safe as possible for all ages and is committed to the health of our kids. As always, new families are welcome to our practice. We encourage you to help us help you to keep your children healthy during this difficult time.

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