Americans are moving slowly on receiving the bivalent booster to protect against the Omicron variant of COVID-19, and public health officials are expressing concern for the overall low COVID vaccine uptake for children nationwide.
There’s been a rise in cases in Arizona this week, with 5,129 new cases reported. The Arizona Department of Health Services COVID-19 data dashboard recorded only 25 new deaths in connection with the coronavirus.
Between 2018 and 2021, 60% of Arizona schools with kindergarten classes had decreases in students vaccinated for measles, mumps and rubella (MMR). According to analysis by the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, rates of vaccination for Arizona children have plummeted since delays in childhood care due to the COVID-19 pandemic, due in part to the number of vaccine-exempt students rising over the past decade due to personal belief exemptions.
Inside Health Policy reports that low vaccine supply and the opt-in approach to COVID-19 vaccines at pediatric offices incidentally became a barrier to vaccine uptake among children. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Ruth Link-Gilles also noted that the low availability of outcomes data made it challenging to convince parents to get their children vaccinated.
It’s really abysmal, and I think at this point it’s kind of a sad public health failure.
As of last week, only about 9% of children ages six months to four years, 38% of kids ages five to 11 and 68% of teenagers have received at least one dose of the vaccine.
Public health officials must also contend with the rise of vaccine-related disinformation spread on social media platforms. In an attempt to combat this dangerous trend, YouTube is allowing certain healthcare professionals to apply for verification. According to Modern Healthcare, licensed providers like doctors and mental health professionals can make channels eligible for the YouTube health product features, which will label their videos as an authoritative source and promote the videos to the top of a search.
From Dr. Garth Graham, Global Health of Healthcare at YouTube:
The truth is the bulk of people who create health information, not just on YouTube but across the web, are individuals such as doctors, nurses and other professionals. During COVID, we all saw a surge of healthcare professionals taking platforms like ours to communicate health information. Clinicians are not just interested in publishing journals but reaching out to people.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.