Intermountain Healthcare Urges Student Athletes To Get COVID-19 Vaccine

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH – Two experts with Intermountain Healthcare had a message Wednesday for student athletes: You can protect yourself from COVID-19 and protect your sport season by getting vaccinated.

“You can think of that vaccination as part of your protective equipment, like a knee pad or helmet, this season,” said Rhett Farrer, a certified athletic trainer based at Intermountain St. George Regional Hospital.

Farrer said athletes who get the COVID-19 vaccine can avoid disruptions to practices and games.

“If either you’re exposed or you come down with symptoms, there’s going to be a 10-day or two-week isolation period for you,” he explained. “You’re going to lose time in your season but hopefully you can prevent that through a vaccination.”

From his work with athletes from 11 high schools and one university in southwest Utah, Farrer said he sees that the teens are getting peer pressure on both sides about whether or not to receive the vaccine.

“Unfortunately, I think it starts to be a conspiracy and/or political conversation rather than a true science conversation,” Farrer said.

He joined Intermountain Healthcare’s medical director for community health and prevention in calling for those age 12 and older to get the vaccine.

“The vaccine is highly effective,” said Dr. Tamara Sheffield. “It is even more effective in the younger ages, we find, than in older.”

Sheffield said kids and teens are at risk for severe disease from COVID and that athletes should be concerned about the possibility of lingering symptoms.

“This is the thing that really impacts performance,” she said. “Long-COVID is the one thing you don’t want to be getting and we see that in children.”

Those who experience ongoing symptoms have them for a median length of about eight months, Sheffield said.

“They get long-term fatigue, shortness of breath, cough, joint pain, chest pain,” she said, adding that concentration and memory can also be affected by long-COVID.

Just as the new school year approaches, Sheffield said the surging delta variant is causing serious concern.

“Our vaccination rates have not gone up as quickly as we thought they would and we got rid of masking, those are two problems in terms of creating this new spike,” she said. “And it’s allowing the delta variant to really take over in our population and we’ve got to stop it.”