Many Kids Have Missed Routine Vaccines, Worrying Doctors As School Starts
The pandemic has meant many kids have put off doctor visits and recommended shots. Experts worry that means some pockets of the U.S. are now more vulnerable to outbreaks of measles and meningitis.
As she does ahead of every school year, Karen Schwind and the team of school nurses she manages in the New Braunfels Independent School District in central Texas spent a lot of time checking every student's immunization records against the state's database. The nurses also checked with parents and doctors' offices to ensure all students had received their required shots for measles, mumps, diphtheria, meningitis and other childhood diseases before classes started.
"We start notifying parents in the winter — like January, March and then again in May," says Schwind, whose district has 15 K-12 schools.
But recently, just a
