On November 11, 2021, the Calvert County Health Department released the following statement:
This week, the Calvert County Health Department, has been providing Covid vaccines to students in our county’s schools. The Health Department has teamed with Calvert County Public Schools to provide influenza vaccinations for well over a decade. During that time, protocols have been in place to best assure that students who are consented by their parents to receive vaccination receive appropriate and safe care. For the first time in well over 15,000 vaccinations, a student who was not consented by their parents inadvertently received a vaccination. That student is doing well, and parents were immediately notified once the error was recognized.
In addition to the existing verification protocols that have, up until this week, prevented any incidents of mistaken identity over many years, the health department and the school system have added two new measures. To supplement the identification checks that have been in place before children walk from their classrooms to the vaccination room, each teacher will do a final verification that the names on the vaccination list match both the child and the individual name tags. There are two layers of child verification in the vaccination room. Historically, if there was any discrepancy in the verification process or for any reason the nurses had reason to be concerned, they would call the child’s parent to assure the vaccination was appropriate. If the parent could not be reached for verification, the child was sent back to class unvaccinated, and a note was sent home explaining why the vaccination was not given. Going forward, in addition to speaking to the parent, we will have the parent speak directly to the child with the nurse listening on speaker to absolutely be certain that the parent and child match. This may be done through video such as FaceTime or additional information will be obtained, such as a nickname that only the child’s parents would know.
On behalf of the nurses at our health department and the school system, we terribly regret the occurrence this week. In my conversations with nurses, they were visibly upset that such a thing could happen. Although the vaccinated child is doing fine, we realize that any mistake in health settings can have detrimental consequences. It is our obligation to you and your children to do better in the future. We are taking steps to do that. Your trust means everything to us.
Sincerely,
Dr. Larry Polsky, Calvert County Health Officer
