The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) unanimously voted so as to add COVID-19 vaccines to the record of childhood and grownup immunizations in 2023. But some are confused about what precisely which means.
Before the vote even befell on Oct. 20, there was an uproar on social media, with some, together with Fox News host Tucker Carlson, inaccurately claiming the choice would “make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school.”
The misinformation led to the CDC responding on social media earlier than the committee voted on the measure, explaining: “States establish vaccine requirements for school children, not ACIP or CDC.”
Under state vaccination necessities, the CDC notes that “state laws establish vaccination requirements for school children,” explaining that these legal guidelines usually apply to kids attending public faculties in addition to these at personal faculties and day care services. “All states provide medical exemptions, and some state laws also offer exemptions for religious and/or philosophical reasons,” based on the CDC.
Andrew Pekosz, professor of molecular microbiology and immunology at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, tells Yahoo Life that the CDC suggestion isn’t a “mandate.” “Currently, there is only a recommendation from the CDC vaccine advisory board, not an official policy statement,” he says. “This recommendation is not to mandate COVID vaccinations, but to recommend them as part of the childhood immunization schedule. This would be similar to the recommendation for children to get the annual influenza vaccine — it’s a recommendation but not a requirement.”
Pekosz explains that “individual school systems would be allowed to determine how to deal” with the CDC suggestions and “pediatricians would probably have more discussions with parents about the COVID vaccine if it was part of the childhood immunization schedule.”
In a press release revealed on Oct. 20, the CDC clarified that the group “only makes recommendations for use of vaccines, while school-entry vaccination requirements are determined by state or local jurisdictions.”
The CDC additionally said that it’s “important to note that there are no changes in COVID-19 vaccine policy” and that the vote “simply helps streamline clinical guidance for healthcare providers by including all currently licensed, authorized and routinely recommended vaccines in one document.”
However, provided that kids have the bottom charges of hospitalization and demise from COVID, some have questioned why the vaccines would must be added to the record of childhood immunizations. Pekosz explains that “while children have the lowest rates of disease severity from COVID, COVID disease still causes a large number of severe infections in that age group. There are much more severe cases of COVID in children than there are in any given year from influenza, for example, and influenza vaccination is recommended for all children.”
He factors out that COVID vaccines are “much, much safer than getting a COVID infection in this and all age groups, which is another reason why it is being recommended.”
Pekosz provides: “We also have to realize that COVID-19 will be an ongoing problem and we need to have a strategy in place to limit case numbers as well as severe cases — vaccination is one important part of that strategy.”
The CDC’s advisory committee additionally voted so as to add COVID-19 vaccines to the federally funded Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, which supplies free vaccines to eligible kids of households who won’t in any other case be capable of afford them — particularly, that features youngsters 18 years and youthful who’re both American Indian or Alaska Native, uninsured, underinsured or Medicaid-eligible. This “helps reduce disparities in access,” based on the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“Equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines for all ages and populations remains critically important,” the CDC’s Dr. Sara Oliver stated on the assembly, based on ABC News. “This includes now, while the vaccines are being supplied by the federal government, and in the future, when we one day move to a commercial program.”
That day isn’t far off — Pfizer just lately introduced that it could begin charging between $110 and $130 per dose for its COVID vaccine as soon as the U.S. authorities’s buying program ends, which is anticipated to occur subsequent yr.
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