Catch-Up Schedule and Minimum Intervals for Young Adult Vaccines
The Real Truth about Vaccines
Are you a young adult who has missed some or all of your vaccines and is ready to get caught up? Good for you! That can be confusing though, so here is a catch-up schedule with minimum intervals for the recommend vaccines that you should get.
Catch-Up Schedule and Minimum Intervals for Young Adult Vaccines
If you haven’t had any vaccines, then this is the vaccine schedule for you.
I bet that there fewer vaccines on the catch-up schedule than you thought you might have to get!
That’s because some vaccines are mainly given to younger children, namely the rotavirus, Hib, hepatitis A, and pneumococcal vaccines.
Now, that’s not to say that you can’t get most of those vaccines as an adult.
In fact, except for the rotavirus vaccine, they are all recommended for adults in some special situations.
Do you need to get any of them?
Do you have any of these high risk conditions, like asplenia?
Do you have any chronic health problems? If you do, talk to your health care provider to see if you require any of these extra vaccines.
Questions on Catching up on Vaccines
But what if you aren’t completely unvaccinated and may of have had some vaccines when you were a baby?
Do you have to start over?
Fortunately, except for a few special situations, like when getting oral typhoid vaccines and some cholera vaccines, you never have to restart a vaccine series, so those early vaccines you got still count!
What if you think you might have gotten some vaccines, but you have no idea which ones?
In that situation, if you definitely can’t get any old vaccine records, while you could just start over, you could also check your titers to see if you are immune and can skip any of the vaccines.
Also note that:
Twinrix is a combination vaccine with both hepatitis A and B vaccines in one dose
Heplisav-B is a 2 dose hepatitis B vaccine
Penbraya and Penmenvy are combination vaccines with meningococcal A, B, C, W, and Y strains
Flumist is a nasal spray flu vaccine that can be given to healthy adults through age 49 years
if you don’t get live vaccines, like MMR and Varicella, at the same time, be sure to separate them by at least 4 weeks
if you don’t have insurance to pay for your vaccines, each state has an adult safety net program that includes free or low-cost routine vaccines, including California, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and Washington, etc.
Of course, you should also know that cases of measles, pertussis, and other vaccine preventable diseases are on the way back, so you are at great risk if you are unvaccinated. And of course, some diseases, like tetanus, never left!
So congratulations on the decision to get vaccinated and protected!