Years from now, healthcare professionals, economists, public health officials, and policymakers will evaluate the true impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the U.S. and the world. However, here in the present, the pandemic has shone a spotlight on both the negative and positive aspects of our current healthcare system. We confirmed that flaws in our healthcare system leave seniors and individuals living in low-income communities exposed to an excessive burden of illness and that ethnic and racial minorities of all ages have markedly diminished access to preventative care such as immunizations. But we also witnessed how healthcare professionals cared for the sick under tremendous pressure while sacrificing their health and saw how private and public partnerships can develop and deploy life-saving vaccines in record time.
Finally, we observed how the pandemic depressed routine childhood vaccinations across the U.S. When the country shut down in March 2020, pediatrician visits were put on hold. That inevitably led to kids falling behind on their vaccine schedules. The majority of recommended routine immunizations by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) are for children at birth up until the age of six, with most vaccines given by age two. The successful administration of vaccines prevents diseases we rarely hear about anymore—mumps, measles, polio. However, because of significantly reduced routine immunization of children over the past two years, those diseases could become an unfortunate reality and a serious public health hazard we must deal with amid a pandemic. This will further delay a return to normalcy, which everyone is yearning for.
