Scheduling Flu, COVID, RSV Vaccines

2024-2025 Cough and Cold Season

Hi Puffins!!!!

It is that time of the year again.  

That’s right it is “reactivating dormant immune systems by means of inoculation of seasonal and genetic drift variances in viral pathogens of the upper and lower respiratory system, thus preventing unneeded morbidity and mortality in susceptible humans and communities.”  

Also known as: Seasonal Flu/Covid and RSV vaccine time!

We have our first batch of seasonal flu and RSV vaccines in clinic and are awaiting our first batch of the updated COVID vaccines.

Because we are a small pediatric clinic (on purpose) our vaccine supplier is only shipping us vaccines for kids.   So we have/will have Flu and COVID vaccines for 6 months - 18 years; and RSV vaccines for infants 8 months or younger.  Trust me, I would have loved to be able to have vaccines for the whole family but the minimum order for vaccines for those over 18 is a lot (like a lot a lot) and way more than we have parents in our clinic.  So for those 19 and over best to get the Flu and COVID boosters at your favorite pharmacy or one of the city pop up vaccine clinics.  As we continue to grow as a practice I hope to be able to do whole family vaccine clinics in the future.

Now timing of the vaccines.  So these vaccines give us 4-6 months of protection usually.  So we want to time administering them with the peak of the cough/cold season.  Last year the cases started to rise late October and lasted to March.  So, I am planning on timing our vaccine clinic days with that.  

Vaccine clinic days will start October 1st in clinic.  I will be updating the schedule to having the majority of visits in clinic for the first 2 weeks of October as vaccine visits and same day sick visits to allow for ample opportunity to get all the kiddos boosted.  So as the schedule gets updated feel free to grab a spot on the patient portal by choosing vaccine visit or call clinic to have Gal or me schedule you.  

The vaccine clinic days may change though.  I am calling my infectious disease friends at Seattle Childrens pretty much every day asking for reports on what viruses are popping up when they test kids in the hospital, urgent care and emergency room.  As of today there is virtually no flu or RSV in their hospital system.  But if they tell me there has been a 10% increase over the week in flu or RSV I will bump up those clinic dates.  And vice verse, if we hit the first week of October and still no increase in cases we will let ya’ll know and see if you want to push the shot a back a little bit longer.

Two instances that we may want to give the vaccines ASAP:

  1. if ya’ll are traveling (by plane/internationally) before our vaccine clinic days we should give the vaccines before that first week of October. 

  2. Or if there is a known close exposure to RSV or Flu we can give the vaccine before the first week of October.

If you want some more info/explanation of the seasonal flu vaccine here is our Puffin Pack Kids Health Article Link:  

https://www.puffinpediatrics.com/kids-health-articles/flu-vaccine

Thank ya’ll again for being such and awesome Puffin Community and Family and we look forward to helping protect your kiddos from Flu/COVID/RSV this fall and winter season.  

-Dr. Fradkin and Gal