The CDC‘s advisory committee voted to include the Covid Vaccine in the recommended immunization schedule for children and adults.
Children 6 months and older, as well as adults, should receive the Covid vaccine and boosters, according to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which voted unanimously.
The CDC’s advisory committee annually meets to review and update the vaccination schedule. The schedule is intended to assist doctors in determining when to administer several necessary vaccinations, particularly for children, such as polio, measles, whooping cough, and tetanus shots.
The CDC will officially decide to add Covid vaccination to the schedule. The organization is expected to sign off on the recommendation, but it is not required.
The recommended immunization schedule is not a vaccination requirement. States and local governments determine which vaccines are required for school attendance.
“Moving Covid-19 to the recommended immunization schedule has no impact on what vaccines, if any, are required for school entrance,” Dr Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at Thursday’s ACIP meeting. “Local control is important. And we respect that the decision regarding school entry for vaccines remains with the state, county, and municipal levels if they exist at all.”This discussion changes nothing,” he said.
In 2006, for example, the CDC added the HPV vaccine to the recommended schedule. Since then, only a few states and territories have made the vaccines mandatory for public school attendance. HPV vaccines are required for boys and girls in Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, and Washington, D.C. Virginia only requires the shots for females.
The advisory committee revises the schedule on a regular basis. Last year, for example, a dengue vaccine was added for children living in endemic areas of the virus, such as Puerto Rico and American Samoa. The committee may also make changes to which strain-specific vaccines are recommended for specific illnesses, such as pneumonia.
According to Dr Julie Morita, executive vice president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the immunization schedule is the “gold standard” that helps clinicians determine which vaccines to recommend. Morita is also a former Chicago public health commissioner and a practising paediatrician.
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“I used to wait for this vaccine schedule every year to ensure I was following the best vaccination guidance available,” she explained.
The CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule also guides insurance providers, who typically cover the vaccines on the list. That will be critical next year, when federal funds for Covid vaccines are expected to run out, shifting the burden to the private market.
The committee voted on Wednesday to include Covid vaccines in the Vaccines for Children program, a federal program that provides free vaccines to children who qualify for or are covered by Medicaid.
“By incorporating it into the VFC program, it now makes these vaccines available to these uninsured and underinsured children,” Morita explained.
Vaccination rates among children have fallen dramatically in recent years, particularly during the pandemic.
Cases of covid in children have been decreasing in recent weeks. Last week, nearly 28,000 cases of Covid in children were reported in the United States, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. The number of new weekly cases fell below 30,000 for the first time since early April. Children now account for approximately 13% of new Covid customers.
