Hi there. I recently completed my masters, but in the social sciences. I too had this worry. One way I worked around this was that I asked my prof with whom I worked with if I could continue to volunteer in her lab (I went to a different uni for my masters) and she was more than ok with that. I started small, I began to turn my thesis into a publishable paper for the school journal, and after they said no, I asked if she would help me turn it into a publishable paper and she has. You could ask one of your Prof if you could volunteer. Also, Ive found volunteering to be a great source of research opportunities, you might not get paid, but the opurtunity to publish is there.

Lastly, if the above doesn't work, I think its completely fine if there is a break in publishing/research activity. I took a year off grad school for health reason, and I have not found that it has impacted my future application. Transitioning from academia out into the academic world is tough. But I would say see if there are research opportunities in the new area and go from their.