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Could Public Schools Require COVID Vaccinations for Entry?

The Fresno Bee spoke with Fresno Health Department officials Dr. John Zweifler, family physician, and Fresno Health Department community health division manager Joe Prado, who oversees the county’s vaccine distribution.

A line of parked school buses.
TNS
(TNS) - COVID-19 vaccines will soon be available for all Californians ages 16 and older.
 
Will schools mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for college and K-12 students once it is available for children?'
 
California has a few vaccines required for all students — polio, Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Pertussis (DTaP), Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR), Hepatitis B, and chickenpox.
 
Students are then required to get another set of vaccines before entering the seventh grade.
 
Currently, there are no laws in place that require COVID-19.
 
House Bill 1057 is a Republican bill presented in February that would prohibit public and private employers from requiring a coronavirus vaccine as a condition of employment.
 
The Bee's Ed Lab spoke with Fresno Health Department officials Dr. John Zweifler, a family physician, and Fresno Health Department community health division manager Joe Prado, who oversees vaccine distribution in Fresno County.
 
COVID vaccine Q&A with the Fresno County Health Department
 
Ed Lab: Why does California law require school vaccinations for some illnesses but not others?
 
Dr. John Zweifler: "Vaccines are required for illnesses that are highly contagious and have the potential for serious illness. It's protecting the school as a whole if one person is ill. Not all illnesses and all vaccines are required. So, for example, you're not required to vaccinate against rotavirus. We are required to vaccinate you against polio and diphtheria. There is an element of the judgment and decision-making of the potential impact of the disease."
 
Joe Prado: "All the school vaccination requirements are really developed at the federal level through the Advisory Committee of Immunization Practices (ACIP). That's a subcommittee that makes those recommendations for what school vaccinations could look like. If you think about the COVID vaccine approval process that it's gone through, we have implemented what the federal and state government requires of us to do. That is something we are still waiting to see, but at this time, it is not a mandatory vaccine.
 
"In addition to that, we have to evaluate all the required vaccines. To date, for school admission, none of those vaccines are on an emergency use authorization like the COVID vaccine is. That is a significant difference between other vaccines that are required and why the COVID vaccine isn't at this time. Now, that can change as now we are seeing more data, those federal requirements may change, those state requirements may change."
 
Education Lab: What is the latest information on a COVID-19 vaccine for children?
 
Zweifler: "Based on what we've seen with adults, we would expect the vaccine to be highly effective. The more we learn about the vaccine, the more encouraging it's been.
 
"Not only are we seeing extreme rates of prevention of serious illness and death. But we are also seeing it's effective in preventing you from transmitting covid even if you don't get sick. Finally, we are seeing that it remains effective against the variants that we know are out there. It is real effective. There is no contraindications to it, and there is no reason to think that it would not be any less effective in children. It is the clearest path we have for navigating through this pandemic.
 
"With that in mind, we are concerned.
 
"We're excited that our children are able to go back to school, but we need to remember that COVID is a respiratory illness. It's spread in groups, so when you get children together in a school setting, you're increasing the likelihood that you're going to have transmission.
 
"We can help reduce that risk by wearing a mask and socially distancing. We're introducing the opportunity for COVID to spread more as the schools reopen. There are a lot of reasons why we want to reopen, but we have to do it safely, so we need to continue to keep our guard up, and whatever we can do as adults to have our community vaccinated, we are going to reduce our chances to have our children infected as well."
 
Ed Lab: Who makes the decision when it comes to vaccines for colleges and Universities? Is it still a federal mandate, or is it up to the colleges?
 
Prado: "It's almost the same workflow process with the federal government. The ACIP recommendations comes down, and then the state adopts those recommendations as well. So whenever we look at vaccination programs, whether it's k-12 or universities, everybody looks through those source documents and that direction from state and federal entities."
 
Zweifler: "With Fresno State, it goes through the (state) chancellor's office, so the chancellor would be looking at that same guidance frame."
 
Ed Lab: Do you think as the COVID-19 vaccine becomes more widely distributed that we will see a legal requirement of this vaccine?
 
Zweifler: It's hard to say. We don't require the flu vaccine, which is something that we have boosters for. It's hard to know what that will look like. We don't know how long the vaccine will last. There is a lot of unanswered questions.
 
"But I wouldn't be surprised if, given the way the variants continued to appear, that there is some type of booster that is required on some type of regular basis. If our experience with the flu is any indication, then we would expect that healthcare providers would be expected to get vaccinated.
 
"Whether it would be required in an ongoing basis for other types of settings, we have very few examples of that in our society, so I think I would be cautious about making that a requirement across the board."
 
 
 
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