Four Democratic-controlled Western states on Wednesday issued their own recommendations on who should get three common seasonal vaccines, a sharp rejection of efforts by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to upend vaccine policy at the federal level.
The so-called West Coast Health Alliance — which includes health officials in California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii — recommended that every resident 6 months and older receive the flu vaccine this fall. They also recommended that broad swaths of the population receive a Covid-19 shot, including pregnant women and all children from 6 months to 2 years old, and that R.S.V. vaccines be given to infants under 8 months and adults over 75, as well as to others with certain risk factors.
The detailed guidance generally mirrors clinical recommendations that have been made by the federal government and by national medical organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and the American Academy of Family Physicians.
But it diverges in some ways from those of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention under Mr. Kennedy, which no longer recommends the Covid vaccine for healthy pregnant women and which says that healthy children should only receive it in consultation with a doctor. It has not taken major action to change recommendations around flu vaccines, and it has not yet weighed in on the R.S.V. vaccines.
This week, the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is set to meet to review, and potentially change, recommendations for several vaccines, including those for Covid, hepatitis B and measles. This summer, Mr. Kennedy fired all the members of the committee and replaced them. His new picks included people who have long been skeptical about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.
The Western states’ guidelines were announced on the same day that Susan Monarez, the recently ousted director of the C.D.C., testified before the Senate health committee, saying she was fired by Mr. Kennedy for refusing to preemptively support his vaccine recommendations without seeing the science behind them.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.
Thank you for your patience while we verify access.
Already a subscriber? Log in.
Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The post Western States Issue Their Own Vaccine Recommendations to Counter Kennedy appeared first on New York Times.
