In a news release issued Monday, the Pennsylvania departments of Education, Health, Human Services and Insurance remind parents “to ensure their children’s immunizations are up to date as part of back-to-school preparations. Vaccine requirements also extend to students of cyber and charter schools,” the release states.

“Vaccines are a necessary precaution needed to protect infants, children and teens from serious childhood diseases such as measles, mumps and chickenpox. Staying up to date with immunizations provides the best protection against disease and is essential to individual and population health.”

A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that routine childhood vaccinations declined significantly during the spring because of COVID-19.

Parents: We know you’ve got a lot on your plates right now. We know the spring shutdown made visits to the pediatrician’s office difficult, even scary.

But pediatricians know how to keep your children safe, and their offices have implemented stringent health measures. And keeping your children safe means ensuring that their immunizations are up to date.

Even if your kids are attending virtual classes beginning this month, please make sure they’re fully immunized against vaccine-preventable childhood diseases.

Now is not the time to risk having your kids contract measles or chickenpox or whooping cough or meningitis. They need to be as healthy as possible as summer turns to fall and flu season arrives, when health care providers are going to be handling both COVID-19 patients and people sick with influenza. Some of those COVID-19 patients likely will be children.

Nearly 180,000 new child cases of COVID-19 were reported in the U.S. from July 9 to Aug. 6, according to a report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association. And “over 380,000 children have tested positive for COVID-19 since the onset of the pandemic,” that report states.

Younger children don’t often experience serious COVID-19 symptoms, but a rare inflammatory condition in children linked to the coronavirus can be serious, requiring intensive hospital care.

So taking vaccine-preventable diseases off the list of potential health dangers for kids ought to be a priority.

We were disappointed when, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the state Department of Health “quietly announced late last month that it was temporarily suspending requirements for children’s immunizations.”

Doctors, the Inquirer reported, feared the move “could send mixed signals to parents about the importance of preventing disease, and could mark a return for vaccine-preventable diseases like measles.”

We share that fear.

The message on childhood vaccinations should be crystal-clear: They’re essential. And they should not be delayed.

According to the news release from the state, the temporary regulatory suspension of children’s immunization requirements “allows children to enter and attend school or an early childhood program for two months without the required immunizations.”

- LNP

The foregoing opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the Editorial Board or Times News LLC.