D.C. leaders are urging families to make sure their kids are caught up on back-to-school vaccines, or they’ll risk missing class until they are.
D.C. leaders are urging families to make sure their kids are caught up on back-to-school vaccines, or they’ll risk missing class until they are.
About 85% of students across the city are in compliance with the requirements, according to D.C. Health Director Ayanna Bennett. But those who aren’t will be “temporarily excluded” from school starting Dec. 8, which is the scheduled deadline.
The step is particularly critical for students in Pre-K3, kindergarten, seventh and 11th grades, Bennett said. Those are ages at which kids are due for booster shots.
“If you get contact with one of these dangerous bacteria or viruses, kids have to be excluded from school for a lot longer than just a few days to get a vaccine appointment,” Bennett said. “This is the way we keep all of our kids in the classroom and keep them healthy and out of the hospital.”
Students who haven’t received their vaccines can either visit their own doctor or show an appointment card indicating there’s an appointment scheduled but they haven’t been able to get in yet.
Howard University’s faculty practice on Georgia Avenue is offering walk-in vaccinations Friday, Monday and Tuesday, Bennett said, and vaccinations will also be offered at Saturday’s EdFEST.
Cedar Hill Urgent Care is also offering back-to-school vaccines, Bennett said.
Typically, the city starts to “catch up a lot in the next week or so, and the kids who haven’t caught up then catch up very quickly after the exclusion date. We’re feeling pretty good about the number as it stands right now,” Bennett said.
In most cases, families of students who aren’t caught up are notified, and if there’s no action, “they’ll come to school and be told that they actually can’t be in school that day,” she added.
Broadly, the city has been making progress, Bennett said. Four years ago, 79% of kindergartners had received the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine. Last year, 93% of kindergartners got it.
“Vaccines are one of the most stable, reliable and effective parts of our public health system,” Bennett said. “There really has been little change in the schedule and very little true controversy around it for a really long time. People can depend on the physicians that they know and the community places that they are familiar with to tell them what they need; and then if they get those vaccinations, we can have a community that doesn’t have vulnerability to outbreaks, like the current measles outbreaks happening across the country.”
The Docket app online at vaccines.dc.gov can help parents figure out which vaccine their child needs, Bennett said.
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