West coast states band together to issue vaccine guidelines after CDC and HHS purge | US news

Four Western States make their own joint recommendations for which should receive Covid, Flu and RSV vaccines this fall, providing a counterweight in anticipation of the new Trump administration’s vaccination advice, which has served eminent scientists from the Federal Health Department and named skeptics and criticism of vaccines with key roles.

The new recommendations come as recently dismissed director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, told Congress that she feared that, as part of Robert F Kennedy Jr, the head of Trump, the head of the Ministry of Health and Social Services, there was “a real risk that recommendations could be written for vaccines for children and other people needing, without rigorous scientific review ”.

The new directives of California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii, which have formed what they call the West Coast Health Alliance, urge Americans to obtain the COVVI-19 vaccine this year if they are pregnant, aged 65 or over, have a range of risk factors or simply “choose protection”. Very young children, from 23 months old to six years old, should also receive the conscious vaccine this year, states recommend, as are older children and adolescents who have risk factors or have not been vaccinated before.

“These recommendations represent an effort of collaboration, made with humility and based on science, to assume our responsibilities towards our communities and the public as a whole,” said Dr. Kenneth Fink, director of the Ministry of Health of Hawaii.

The recommendations of Western States contrast with the CUVV-19 current directives of the Trump administration. In what experts have called an unprecedented decision, Kennedy, one of the most important vaccine skeptics in the United States, announced in May that the federal government only recommended pregnant and children receive the COVVI-19 vaccine.

California, Washington and Oregon announced the West Coast Health Alliance in early September, shortly after the White House forced Monarez, who had clashed with Kennedy for her efforts to reshape the federal vaccine policies in a way that contradicts scientific research. Hawai’i has since joined the Alliance.

Unlike the acting head of Trump’s CDC, a former editor and investment director without medical or scientific history, state health officers who have developed the new recommendations “are all doctors”, according to a statement from the Governor of California Gavin Newsom. The recommendations are also based on the advice of the main health associations, including the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The release of the recommendations of winter vaccines from western states occurred one day before a federal advisory committee on immunization should meet the current standards of vaccines, potentially re -examining the federal recommendations on routine vaccinations that children should receive, including standard hepatitis B vaccinations and HPV (human papillomavirus).

Kennedy served the existing members of the Consultative Committee on Vaccination Practices (ACIP) in June, a moving in chief of a public health association called a “coup” and replaced them with his own experts.

Even a republican senator who is a doctor, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, has spoken out in terms of concern for the risk of canceling the recommendation of a vaccine against hepatitis B, saying that the protection of newborns against the virus was a huge success in the reinforcement of healthier Americans.

At the end of August, Cassidy published a statement calling for a postponement from the ACIP meeting, which should start on Thursday, arguing: “If the meeting takes place, the recommendations made should be rejected as lacking in legitimacy given the gravity of allegations and the current turmoil in the direction of the CDC.”

Monarez, who served less than a month as director of the CDC, warned in the testimony of the congress on Wednesday that Kennedy told him at the end of August that “the calendar of infantile vaccines would be changed from September, and that I had to be on board”, and said that he had then dismissed her after she was not committed to “getting involved in advance to approve all scientists “and to do to approve all the recommendations of the former, regardless of scientific evidence” and to do to approve all the members of the former. For vaccine policy without reason.

In response to questions on Western states providing alternative vaccinations guidelines, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Health and Social Services of Trump defended the ACIPS Committee, claiming that “the scientific body remains which guides the recommendations of immunization in this country”, and that “HHS will guarantee policy is based on rigorous evidence and state-failed policy, pandemic ”.

“The States led by Democrats have pushed the locking of non-scientific schools, the mandates of the Mask for Toddlers and Draconian Passports of the Vaccine during the Covid era have completely eroded the confidence of the American people in public health agencies,” the spokesman said in a press release.

Although Trump officials said that any adult who wanted a COVVI-19 vaccine will always be able to obtain one whatever the federal guidelines, experts say that this is “deceptive” and that federal directives are deeply shaping the way insurance companies reimburse the cost of vaccines and how pharmacies provide them, potentially creating practical and financial obstacles Always be vaccated.

“If vaccine protections are weakened, avoidable diseases will return,” said Monarez on Wednesday.

Lauren Gambino, Madeleine Aggeler and Melody Schreiber contributed to reports