Community Health Northwest Florida CEO Chandra Smiley told Inweekly that her organization placed it pre-order for the newly approved Covid vaccine for children five and under.
“Hopefully, this week we’ll receive the vaccines,” said Smiley. “We’ll have it in our pediatric clinics so that parents bringing their children in would like to receive the vaccine, talk it over with their pediatrician.”
Community Health has delivered the vaccines for older children through its pediatric clinics in Escambia and Santa Rosa counties to give parents the opportunity to ask questions of the pediatricians about the shots.
“We want to offer a more intimate opportunity for parents who may want to talk it over,” she told Inweekly. “It seems to work best for our patients to have a pediatrician and that family member to go over the vaccine.”
Smiley shared that Community Health is seeing an uptick in Covid cases and positivity rates. “If you think about like the last couple years with this whole pandemic, it seems like January a spike and a summer spike… So here we are in the summer. So a little bit of a spike is something that we’ve seen previously.”
Community Health has several testing options, including rapid testing for the virus. “One, if you want a home test, just let us know. We’ll provide you one that you can take home. But if you got symptoms and you’re really concerned, then you can go through our walk-in clinics. You could do it at our pharmacies as well.”
Smiley continued, “We’re offering rapid testing. And then depending on what the outcome is, if you need some treatment, then we can certainly work through with any of our providers to get medications prescribed and support to you.”
She said they are seeing more meningitis cases.
“Actually about a week and a half ago, I had a conversation with our director of pediatrics, Dr. Michelle Greer-Hall. And she shared with me that they’ve noticed in our pediatric population, some children being hospitalized for meningitis.”
Smiley added, “So, there is a vaccine for meningitis. It usually starts about 11 or 12. It’s a two dose series. But what she was sharing is that it was younger children that ended up being hospitalized. ”
The common symptoms are high fever, lethargic, maybe back pain. She said, “If your child just doesn’t seem like themselves, get them checked out pretty quick because early intervention is key.”