[ad_1]
Early next year, all eligible students attending a Los Angeles public school will need to be fully immunized against COVID-19.
The school district is the largest in the country to impose the vaccine – joining a list of other vaccines already required to attend school that protect against highly contagious diseases.
All 50 states and the District of Columbia have vaccine requirements for children to attend schools and daycares, including laws on allowable exemptions.
Massachusetts became the first state to adopt a school vaccination requirement in the 1850s for the smallpox vaccine – the first vaccination developed against a contagious disease – according to a publication from the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Other states followed suit, and during the 1980-81 school year all states had immunization requirements for students entering class, the CDC said.
Children near poor ventilation and hygiene practices can lead to “transmission events,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and contributor to ABC News.
“This is why the school vaccination mandates have been so important,” Brownstein said. “They create a safe environment where you can recognize that you will not be transmitting a wide range of infectious diseases like measles, mumps, rubella, whooping cough.”
The warrants have been “very effective” in preventing epidemics of vaccine-preventable diseases, he said.
Thanks to vaccination efforts, many highly contagious diseases that were once common, such as measles, mumps, whooping cough (a.k.a. pertussis) and chickenpox, are now rare, while polio and smallpox have been eradicated in the states. -United. 936,000 premature deaths and 419 million illnesses among American children born between 1994 and 2018, according to the CDC.
Vaccination mandates for daycares and schools vary by state. All require vaccines that protect against polio, diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, measles and rubella, according to the Immunization Action Coalition (IAC), a vaccine education and advocacy organization. Almost all states require vaccines that protect against mumps, chickenpox, hepatitis B, and pneumococcal disease.
Vaccines that are not widely required by states include those for influenza, hepatitis A, rotavirus and HPV, according to the IAC. The United States stopped routine smallpox vaccination – which was eradicated worldwide – in the 1970s.
“Precedents have been set that you can protect your community by requiring school vaccination requirements,” LJ Tan, policy and partnership manager for IAC, told ABC News.
For the 2019-2020 school year, approximately 95% of kindergarten children in the United States had received the DTaP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis), MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) and chickenpox (chickenpox) vaccines, according to the CDC, with about 5% exempt or not up to date on some doses.
The agency observed a decrease in vaccination rates during the pandemic, as COVID-19 disrupted school visits and routine wells for many families. There was a 14% drop in public sector vaccine orders in 2020-2021 compared to 2019, and measles vaccine orders fell by more than 20%, the CDC reported.
The decline in routine pediatric immunizations has been of great concern to public health experts.
“Anytime we have a decrease in coverage, it could be an opportunity for these infections to reappear and cause epidemics – and one of the most obvious recent examples is measles”, Dr Flor Munoz, disease specialist infectious diseases at Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, ABC News said.
In 2019, the United States experienced its largest measles outbreak in 25 years, with 1,282 confirmed cases in 31 states, mostly among people unvaccinated against the virus, according to the CDC.
It is especially important that children stay up to date on vaccines, as many return to in-person learning and routine activities, Munoz said.
“All of these other vaccine-preventable diseases can come back anytime,” Munoz said. “Vaccination is the easiest and best way to prevent any of these potentially serious infections.”
Pediatric COVID-19 rates have reached record highs in the United States as students return to school. In the past two weeks, nearly half a million children have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the latest pediatric coronavirus case report from the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine is licensed for people as young as 12 and approved by the Food and Drug Administration for ages 16 and older. The drug company said it plans to submit vaccine safety data for children aged 5 to 11 to the FDA by the end of September.
Currently, no state requires the COVID-19 vaccine for children 12 and older for school entry, although some do require it for some state employees and many colleges require it. for students. At the same time, at least nine states have banned schools from requiring students to be vaccinated, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Montana, Oklahoma , Tennessee and Texas, according to the Associated Press.
Last week, the Los Angeles Unified School District Board of Directors approved a mandate that students aged 12 and older must be fully immunized against COVID-19 by January 10, 2022, to attend in person. Right now, the school district has said it does not require boosters, which the Biden administration plans to make available to the general public as early as next week, at least eight months after their second dose.
Beyond Los Angeles, neighboring Culver City is requiring public school students to get vaccinated this school year, and two San Francisco Bay Area districts are considering the same. Other school districts could likely follow suit, creating a “domino effect,” Brownstein said, especially as young children become eligible for the vaccine.
“A safe vaccine that can prevent transmission, protect our children, and ensure they can stay in learning in person actually makes a lot of sense,” he said. “And there is historical precedent for doing so.”
[ad_2]
Source link