University of Kansas Health System experts are encouraging parents to get their children vaccinated, as a new analysis finds COVID-19 caused kids to miss millions of school days across the country. A recent study by the Journal of the American Medical Association estimated that kids missed more than five million days of school that could have been prevented by COVID vaccine boosters. KU Health System Infectious Disease Specialist, Dr. Dana Hawkinson, says he hopes the study proves the importance to parents of COVID-19 and other childhood vaccines. He added we need to increase that uptake, saying it’s not just the COVID vaccines that need to be promoted, it’s the other childhood vaccines as well. Kansas and Missouri both have low rates of children taking some of the recommended inoculations, including those for the HPV vaccine.
