catching

A lot has happened over the past year, so you can be forgiven for not having a clear memory of what some of the major concerns were at the beginning of the pandemic. However, if you think back to the beginning of the pandemic, one of the major concerns was the role that surfaces played in the transmission of the virus. As an epidemiologist, I remember spending countless hours responding to media requests answering questions along the lines of whether we should be washing the outside of food cans or disinfecting our mail. I also remember seeing teams of people walking the streets at all hours wiping down poles and cleaning public benches. But what does the evidence actually say about surface transmission more than 12 months into this pandemic? Before addressing this, we need to define ...

This spring, after stay-at-home orders were announced and schools shut down across the nation, many families stopped going to their pediatrician. As a result, kids have fallen behind on important childhood vaccinations. Vaccination rates declined starkly after mid-March, with up to 60% reductions in some areas of the country. Nationwide, vaccination rates dropped by 22% among Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program recipients under 2. Now that kids are coming back to pediatricians like me, many parents have questions about catching up. Why is it a problem that my child is behind on vaccines? Vaccines protect your child from serious communicable diseases including brain infections, pneumonia, bloodstream infections and, in the case of the HPV and hepatitis B vaccines, even some t...

Tag: catching

We Can Ease Up On The Disinfecting – Catching COVID From Surfaces Is Very Unlikely

Your child’s vaccines: What you need to know about catching up during the COVID-19 pandemic