The Galveston County Daily News

After Hurricane Ike, residents who stayed in disaster areas, and those who planned to return before Mayor Lyda Ann Thomas declared it safe, rushed to urgent care clinics to be vaccinated against more diseases than travelers visiting developing countries normally worry about.

But according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adults really only need two or three shots to keep them safe.

Anyone who hasn’t had a tetanus or diphtheria vaccine in 10 years should get both.

Experts also recommend that residents 65 years old and older should get a pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPV) if they have any high-risk conditions.

Health officials never recommend children stay during a hurricane, but if they do, those 10 years old or younger need to be up-to-date on the following vaccines:

• Diphtheria and tetanus toxoids and acellular pertussis vaccine (DTaP);

• Inactivated Poliovirus vaccine (IPV);

• Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine (Hib);

• Hepatitis A for children 1-year-old or older (HepA);

• Hepatitis B vaccine (HepB);

• Pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV);

• Measles-mumps-rubella vaccine (MMR);

• Varicella vaccine unless reliable history of chickenpox; and

• Rotavirus vaccine.

Teens between 11 and 12 years old and 15 years old should get a meningococcal conjugate vaccine.