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Indiana lagging in children's vaccinations

By Sara Molina

Posted October 18, 2022

Children older than five can get a COVID booster, but no booster is recommended for children six months to five years of age. (Jeff Kowalsky/APF)

Childhood illnesses preventable by routine vaccinations have increased in Indiana over the last two years.

Routine vaccinations slowed down when COVID-19 hit and doctors’ offices closed, but Indiana has yet to catch up to the rest of the nation.

“I fear that what happened is that some of the hesitation about COVID-19 vaccines and children bled over maybe into other vaccines,” said IU Medical School Ryan White Professor of Pediatrics Chandy John.

Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis has been at capacity for over a month, John said. Kids are suffering from meningitis, pneumonia, measles, the flu and COVID.

What is topping the charts of all of these preventable illnesses is a surge in respiratory viral infections. This has led to a massive increase in hospitalizations nationwide, but especially in Indiana with the lack of routine vaccinations, he said.

“So these are not new viruses,” John said. “They're just a lot more than we usually see at this time of year, all happening at once.”

Indiana is in the bottom 10 worst states for childhood vaccines, and doctors are worried about a possible surge of COVID-19 this winter. This increases the importance of vaccinating children.

“We don't know what the next variant will be, but it's very there's a good likelihood that it's going to be something related to Omicron,” he said.

Last week, bivalent COVID vaccines were released, promising to protect against the original strain and the Omicron variant. John said this is helpful for the winter, but calling it “bivalent” is misleading.

“One thing that we all agree upon is that calling it a bivalent vaccine was a very bad idea,” he said. “It's factually correct, but nobody knows what bivalent means.”

“Bivalent” means there are two forms of spike protein that are generated by the vaccine, John said.

“The simplest way to think about it is that the vaccine will generate responses to two forms of COVID-19,” he said. “The original form that came way back when and the most common form during Omicron.”

Children 5 and up can get this bivalent vaccine, that will help them have a better immune response to combat the virus than the original vaccine would. No booster is recommended for children six months to 5 years old.

John, a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics, highly recommends vaccinating your children with this booster if it has been more than two months since infection or a previous booster.

He also stressed the importance of finding a reliable source when looking for information to vaccinate your children. Having a random person or doctor on Facebook as a source of information is not a good idea, John said.

“It's always best to go with groups or committees from established experts,” he said. ”Because then it's not just one voice, it's a group that has to come together and make a decision, and they make a decision in the best interests of children.”

For more information on children’s vaccinations, you can visit the American Academy of Pediatrics website.