#PrepYourHealth: Tips for Holiday Travel

A person packing a suitcase.

Holiday travel often includes visiting loved ones or taking a vacation. Whether you’re seeking a winter wonderland or an escape from subzero temperatures, follow these travel tips to stay healthy and safe during the holiday travel season.

Before Your Trip

No matter where you plan to travel, check CDC’s destination pages for travel health information. These pages include information about

  • vaccines and medicines you may need, and
  • diseases or health risks that are a concern at your destination.

Get up to date with your COVID-19 vaccines and seasonal flu vaccine. CDC recommends getting the flu vaccine every year.

Get up to date on routine vaccines. Routine vaccinations protect you from infectious diseases such as measles that can spread quickly in groups of unvaccinated people. Many diseases prevented by routine vaccination are uncommon in the United States but common in other countries.

Prepare a travel health kit that includes personal needs, especially those items that may be difficult to find at your destination. Take enough of your prescription and over-the-counter medicines to last your entire trip, plus extra in case of travel delays. You may also want to pack insect repellentsunscreen (SPF 15 or higher), aloe, alcohol-based hand sanitizer, water disinfection tablets, and important paperwork like your health insurance card.

Make sure you have a plan for getting health care during travel. Find out if your health insurance covers medical care abroad. Travelers are usually responsible for paying hospital and other medical expenses out of pocket at most destinations. Consider buying additional insurance that covers health care and emergency evacuation, especially if you will travel to remote areas.

During Your Trip

Choose safe transportation. Always wear your seat belt. If you are traveling with children ages 12 and younger, make sure they are properly buckled in a car seat, booster seat, or seat belt—whichever is appropriate for their age, weight, and height—in the back seat.

Motor vehicle crashes are the leading cause of death among healthy travelers. Be alert when crossing the street, especially in countries where people drive on the left side of the road. Find out other steps you can take to stay safe on the roads.

Protect yourself from the sun. Apply sunscreen with SPF 15 or higher when traveling. Protecting yourself from the sun isn’t just for tropical beaches. You can sunburn even if it’s cloudy or cold. You are at the highest risk for ultraviolet light exposure during summer months, near the equator, at high altitudes, and between 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Stay alert in crowded areas. Does your holiday travel involve markets, festivals, or other activities that involve a large number of people at the same place (mass gathering)? If so, learn some tips to stay safe at a mass gathering.

Considerations for cold weather travel

Wear warm clothing in several loose layers when traveling in cold weather or climates. Learn practical skills and lessons like how to prevent hypothermia and frostbite.

Considerations for warm weather travel

If you are traveling in hot weather or to a hot climate, wear loose, lightweight, light-colored clothing.

Your chances of getting heat stroke, heat exhaustion, or other heat-related illness during travel depend on your destination, activities, level of hydration, and age. The more active you are in high temperatures, the more likely you are to get a heat-related illness. Learn how to prevent heat-related illness.

Use insect repellent and take steps to avoid bug bites. Bugs, including mosquitoes, ticks, and flies, can spread diseases such as Zika, dengue, Lyme, and others. These bugs are typically more active during warm weather. Check your destination’s page to determine what you need to do to protect yourself from diseases spread through bug bites, including medications or vaccines when recommended.

After Your Trip

If you recently traveled and feel sick, particularly if you have a fever, talk to a healthcare professional. Tell them about your travel. Be prepared to answer questions about your vaccination history, destination(s), reasons for traveling, itinerary, and other aspects of your trip.

Resources

Thanks in advance for your questions and comments on this Public Health Matters post. Please note that CDC does not give personal medical advice. If you are concerned you have a disease or condition, talk to your doctor.

Have a question for CDC? CDC-INFO (http://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/index.html) offers live agents by phone and email to help you find the latest, reliable, and science-based health information on more than 750 health topics.

#PrepYourHealth with Vaccines

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August is National Immunization Month.

Over the years, vaccines have prevented countless cases of disease and saved millions of lives. Vaccines are important to helping people stay healthy and protected from serious and sometimes deadly diseases.

Staying up to date on recommended immunizations can help keep you healthy in response to emergencies, including disease outbreaks and natural disasters.

Immunization Recommendations for Responders

Vaccination is an important step every first responder should take to prepare for a response. Some vaccine-preventable diseases are more common after a disaster.

Being up to date on tetanus and hepatitis B vaccines is important for everyone, including emergency responders.

Tetanus is a potential health threat if you sustain wound injuries. Being up to date on tetanus vaccination is the best tool to prevent infection, along with immediate and good wound care.(1)

Everyone aged less than 60 years are recommended to be up to date on Hepatitis B vaccination. Hepatitis B vaccination is also recommended if you are expected to have exposure to blood or blood-contaminated bodily fluids.(2)

People in certain response jobs and travel situations may be exposed to dangerous or deadly diseases that are uncommon in the U.S. Emergency responders should check Traveler’s Health for current vaccine recommendations before they deploy outside of the country. They may include anthrax, cholera, typhoid, rabies, and yellow fever.

Immunization Recommendations for All Individuals

People need different vaccinations depending on their age, location, job, lifestyle, travel schedule, health conditions, or previous vaccinations.

Everyone needs immunizations to help them prevent getting and spreading serious diseases to their loved ones or others in their community.

  • Everyone 6 months and older needs the seasonal flu (influenza) vaccine every year. The flu vaccine is especially important for people with chronic health conditions, pregnant women, and older adults.
  • Every adult should get a Tdap vaccine once if they did not receive it as an adolescent to protect against pertussis (whooping cough). They should get a Td (tetanus, diphtheria) or Tdap booster shot every 10 years. Women should get the Tdap vaccine each time they are pregnant, preferably at 27 through 36 weeks.(3)

CDC recommends COVID-19 primary series vaccines for everyone ages 6 months and older, and COVID-19 boosters for everyone ages 5 years and older, if eligible.(4)

Vaccines help protect you from getting sick or severely ill. Vaccines like those for seasonal flu and COVID-19 are especially important if your emergency action plan is to go to a shelter in an evacuation.

Evacuations for hurricanes and wildfires can force people into emergency shelters, where close quarters, shared spaces, and high-touch surfaces can make it easy for illnesses, including COVID-19 and flu, to spread.

Stay Informed About Staying Up to Date

Immunizations are not just for children. Protection from some childhood vaccines can wear off over time. Adults may also be at risk for vaccine-preventable disease due to age, job, lifestyle, travel, or health conditions.

It’s important that everyone stay up to date on their immunizations so that they are protected when a disaster strikes. You are up to date with when you have received all doses in the primary series of a vaccine and all boosters recommended for you.

Here are three ways you can stay informed of how well you’re staying up to date on recommended vaccines.

  • Take this quiz to find out what other vaccines may be recommended for you. Talk with your healthcare provider to make sure you get the vaccines that are right for you.
  • Download or print copies of age-appropriate vaccination schedules to help you stay informed of when you or a loved one is due for a vaccine or booster. Take with you to your next doctor’s appointment.
  • Ask your doctor, pharmacist, or vaccination provider for a vaccination record form or download one. Keep it with your other important paperwork. Take the form with you to health visits. Ask your vaccination provider to sign and date the form for each vaccine you receive.(5)

Staying up to date can help keep you, your loved ones, and your community safe. Learn more ways to prepare your health for emergencies.

References

  1. https://www.cdc.gov/tetanus/about/prevention.html
  2. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7113a1.htm?s_cid=mm7113a1_w
  3. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/adults/rec-vac/index.html
  4. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/stay-up-to-date.html
  5. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/adults/vaccination-records.html#record-vacc

Resources

Thanks in advance for your questions and comments on this Public Health Matters post. Please note that CDC does not give personal medical advice. If you are concerned you have a disease or condition, talk to your doctor.

Have a question for CDC? CDC-INFO (http://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/index.html) offers live agents by phone and email to help you find the latest, reliable, and science-based health information on more than 750 health topics.

Stat-driven view on how American conservatives shifted against vaccine

As we know by now, conservatives in the U.S. are more commonly against getting vaccinated for Covid, but it wasn’t always like that. Vox shows how ideas shifted to get to where we are now.

The 1990s elementary school aesthetic with markers and overhead projector slides works well here. The choices guide you step-by-step through the data points.

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Death rates by vaccination booster status

Our World in Data continues their important work on providing and showing up-to-date Covid data. Most recently, they updated death rates in Switzerland by vaccination plus booster status. The rates for the unvaccinated are expectedly much higher, but also the rates for those with a booster are multiples lower than those fully vaccinated with no booster.

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Vaccination rates compared against country wealth

Vaccine supply is only part of the equation. For The New York Times, Keith Collins and Josh Holder looked at distribution of available doses in countries, categorized by income group.

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Simpson’s Paradox in vaccination data

This chart, made by someone who is against vaccinations, shows a higher mortality rate for those who are vaccinated versus those who are not. Strange. It shows real data from the Office of National Statistics in the UK. As explained by Stuart McDonald, Simpson’s Paradox is at play:

[W]ithin the 10-59 age band, the average unvaccinated person is much younger than the average vaccinated person, and therefore has a lower death rate. Any benefit from the vaccines is swamped by the increase in all-cause mortality rates with age.

If you’re unfamiliar, Simpson’s Paradox is when a trend appears in separate groups but then disappears or reverses when you combine the groups. In this case, the confounding factors of age and vaccine uptake makes the above chart useless.

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Euler diagram to illustrate base rate fallacy

Some people point out that vaccinated people are still hospitalized as a defense against getting vaccinated. But they ignore the inverse which compares the number of those who are not hospitalized. Someone (source?) made this Euler diagram to illustrate the inverse.

It’s about making a fair comparison. People who wear seat belts can still die in a car collision. People who use contraception can still get STIs. People who eat healthy can still have high cholesterol. But we know these things reduce the chances of dying in a car crash, of getting an STI, and having high cholesterol, so we adjust our choices.

[via @visualisingdata]

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Communicating effectiveness of boosters

Statisticians David Spiegelhalter and Anthony Masters for The Guardian on reframing risk estimates:

An earlier UKHSA study estimated two Pfizer/BioNTech doses gave around 99.7% (97.6% to near-100%) protection against Delta-infected hospitalisation, but after 20 weeks that effectiveness waned to 92.7% (90.3% to 94.6%). This estimated decline for people over 16 may not sound much, but if we look at it in terms of “lack of protection”, their estimated vulnerability relative to being unvaccinated went from 0.3% to 7.3%. That is a major, although uncertain, increase in risk.

Such “negative framing” can change impressions: “90% fat-free” sounds rather different than “10% fat”.

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Healthcare Workers “Pop Up” to Help Vaccinate in IL Communities

This student-authored post is published by CPR in partnership with Medill News Service and the Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, Media, Integrated Marketing Communications. The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the views, policies, or positions of CPR or CDC.

The sound of live music and the smell of fried food filled the air on a warm July evening in Moline, Illinois’ Hispanic Floreciente neighborhood. Peggy Newkirk, 73, a retired nurse practitioner, stands behind a folding table in the shade with other volunteers.

Most people crowd to Mercado on Fifth—a weekly open-air cultural fest and market—in the summer to shop, eat, and dance. But Newkirk and her fellow volunteers were there with other plans—to distribute COVID-19 vaccines. “We make it as convenient as possible so that if somebody is even considering it, you’re right there before they have a chance to change their mind,” Newkirk said.

“Pop Ups” Put Shots in Arms

The Rock Island County Health Department has held pop-up vaccine clinics at Mercado on Fifth and at community gathering places in other minority neighborhoods across Rock Island and Moline. The health department also held clinics at the Islamic Center of Quad Cities in Moline and the Second Baptist Church in Rock Island.

About 42% of the population of Rock Island County was fully vaccinated as of August 31, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health.(1) About 52% of people in the U.S. are fully vaccinated.(2)

Nationally, vaccination rates are lower on average among people from racial and ethnic minority groups, according to CDC.(3) The goal of the pop-up vaccine clinics in Rock Island County is to reach disproportionately affected communities and remove barriers to vaccination access.

The clinics were run by health department staff and Rock Island County Medical Reserve Corps volunteers. Most volunteers are retired healthcare workers like Newkirk. They’re trained to fill the gap of first responder and medical staff shortages in emergencies.

“We’re just trying to reach anyone and everyone we can,” said Kate Meyer, manager of emergency planning and response for the health department. “And we couldn’t have done all of our response without the Medical Reserve Corps.”

“Like Giving People Hope.”

Deborah Freiburg, 70, is another Medical Reserve Corps member. She retired in Rock Island after 40 years as a nurse at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, D.C. “Going from working such a heavy job and just all of a sudden retiring, you can’t just sit at home,” she said.

When Freiburg’s planned trip to the Galapagos fell through due to the COVID-19 pandemic, she called the health department and offered to help, first as a contract tracer, then later at the vaccine clinics.

Things were hectic at first. Freiburg remembers standing for six hours at a time in an ice-covered parking lot outside the Tax Slayer Center, the site of Rock Island County’s first mass vaccination clinics. Her job was to monitor vaccine recipients for adverse reactions.

People poured into the clinics. They came by car, bus, and on foot. The health department partnered with public transit company that serves Rock Island and Moline, to provide free bus rides to vaccine appointments. Once dropped off at a clinic parking lot, volunteers would pick up people with mobility issues in golf carts. Peggy Newkirk remembers a family of three generations that came together to get their vaccines.

One man told Freiburg he had waited in his car overnight for his shot. “It was the most exciting thing,” Freiburg said. “Because, you know, it was like giving hope to people. No matter how cold it was outside, or how long you were on your feet, everybody was just excited to be part of this part of history.”

Volunteers and staff were giving out 800 or more vaccine doses each day earlier this year, but the numbers have dropped. Still, regular clinics are set to continue indefinitely.

Hurdles of Hearts and Minds

Many factors influence vaccine decision-making, including cultural, social, and political factors; individual and group factors; and vaccine-specific factors.(3) Newkirk said some of her family members won’t get the shot, despite her best efforts to build COVID-19 vaccine confidence.

Newkirk is undeterred. Confidence in the vaccines leads to more people getting vaccinated, which leads to fewer COVID-19 illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths. “Everybody wants to get society back to normal and the best way to do that is to get the people who aren’t vaccinated, vaccinated,” she said.

References

  1. https://www.dph.illinois.gov/covid19/vaccinedata?county=Rock%20Island
  2. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations_vacc-total-admin-rate-total
  3. https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccination-demographic
  4. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/vaccinate-with-confidence.html

Resources

 

Thanks in advance for your questions and comments on this Public Health Matters post. Please note that CDC does not give personal medical advice. If you are concerned you have a disease or condition, talk to your doctor.

Have a question for CDC? CDC-INFO (http://www.cdc.gov/cdc-info/index.html) offers live agents by phone and email to help you find the latest, reliable, and science-based health information on more than 750 health topics.

Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths for vaccinated vs. unvaccinated

The CDC released a chart that shows case, hospitalization, and death rates for fully vaccinated (blue) against not fully vaccinated (black). As you might expect, the rates for the fully vaccinated are much lower, especially for hospitalizations and deaths.

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