August is Immunization Awareness Month. We are all aware of the importance of vaccines, particularly after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is easy to lose track of which vaccines we have had, and which may need updating. Because there is no single, centralized national source for individual vaccine records in the United States, here are some tips from the CDC for locating your vaccination records:
- Begin with your doctor or public health clinic. Keep in mind that vaccination records are maintained at doctor’s offices for a limited number of years.
- Ask for any existing childhood vaccine records that your parents, caregivers or guardians may have for you, and look through baby books or other childhood documents that were saved.
- Check with your high school or college health service for dates of any vaccines administered there. (This information is only kept for 1-2 years after a student leaves the system, however.) Check with any previous employers, including the military, which may have required immunizations.
- Contact your state’s health department. Some states have vaccine registries (Immunization Information Systems) which will include adult vaccines. In the DMV, the Virginia Department of Health has an online portal for requesting a copy of your immunization record. Maryland currently participates in the online vaccine registry platform MyIRMobile, which DC will also be joining soon (DC’s current immunization portal can be accessed here). Other states currently using MyIRMobile are: Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Dakota, Washington, and West Virginia. MyIRMobile also allows parents or guardians to link to vaccine information for their minor children.
An MyIRMobile vaccine record will receive data from various sources, including chain drugstores. The display looks like this:
Once you have established as complete a vaccine record as you can using the sources listed above, how do you find out which vaccines you may be missing? Here again, the CDC is your friend. On the CDC website, you can access a continually updated schedule of vaccine recommendations, both for Adults and for children, from Birth to 18 Years. To stay up to date with the latest developments in vaccines, you can follow the AMA’s updates here.
How to keep track of your vaccines if you don’t have access to a centralized system like MyIRMobile? There is an app for mobile devices called The Vaccine App, which is available for both Apple and Android devices. (Reviews of the app are quite mixed, however.) For a more DIY solution, consider creating a cloud-based document, such as a spreadsheet where you record your vaccine dates, both past and present.
Finally, what might happen if, due to incorrect records, you receive an extra dose of a given vaccine? A 2019 study done in the United States and published in the journal Vaccine examined instances of adverse events (AEs) most commonly reported following the administration of excess doses of vaccine in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (Moro et al, 2020). The authors of the study state there are several scenarios in which an excess dose of a vaccine might be administered, including when there is a vaccination error arising from documentation or patient recall errors, or where an individual’s vaccination history is uncertain (as may be the case for refugees). The CDC provides continuously updated best practice guidelines for immunizations which cover the administration of excess doses of vaccine, particularly as regards combination vaccines. In examining 366,815 reports submitted to VAERS between the years 2007 and 2017, 1.4% of these reports pertained to an excess dose of vaccine administered. The most frequent type of vaccine included within excess vaccine dose reports was inactivated influenza vaccine. It is interesting to note that manufacturers are by far the most frequent reporters to the VAERS. The most frequent types of adverse events reported were systemic, like fevers, or reactions at the injection site. Of the 158 serious adverse events reported during the period studied, 64 events were found to involve excess vaccine dose. In their discussion, the authors conclude that their findings are generally reassuring since 75% of reports of excess vaccine dose did not report adverse health events, and where those were present, systemic reactions (fevers) and injection site reactions were the most frequent. The authors concluded that there were no new or unexpected safety issues connected with excess doses of vaccine.
Clearly, it is important to spend some time assembling an accurate vaccine record, using as many data sources as are available to you. If your state provides access to a vaccine registry, great! If not, consider putting together a vaccine record for yourself on a cloud-based storage site, making sure to review it periodically to make sure you are up to date with all of them.
References
Moro, P. L., Arana, J., Marquez, P. L., Ng, C., Barash, F., Hibbs, B. F., & Cano, M. (2019). Is there any harm in administering extra-doses of vaccine to a person? Excess doses of vaccine reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), 2007-2017. Vaccine, 37(28), 3730–3734. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2019.04.088
Thank you to Rebecca Kyser for research assistance.
