Adding COVID To CDC Vaccine Schedule Doesn't Mandate It In Maryland

MARYLAND — Children 6 months and older and adults in Maryland and across the nation should get COVID-19 vaccinations and boosters, an advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in a unanimous vote Thursday endorsing the inclusion of the shots in the agency’s recommended immunization schedule.

Nothing in the vote of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which is made up of public health, medical and scientific experts outside the CDC, requires that Americans get the shots.

Fact-checkers were busy ahead of Thursday’s action.

On Tuesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson falsely claimed in a tweet that “the CDC is about to add the Covid vaccine to the childhood immunization schedule, which would make the vax mandatory for kids to attend school.”

CDC officials do think it’s a good idea for people to get inoculations against COVID-19, which has killed 1.06 million people in the U.S. alone since the first laboratory-confirmed domestic case was reported in January 2020.

But the CDC is not requiring vaccinations as a condition of enrollment. The agency does not have the authority to do so.

“Moving COVID-19 to the recommended immunization schedule does not impact what vaccines are required for school entrance,” Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said during Thursday’s ACIP meeting, held via webcast.

“Local control matters,” Shah continued. “And we honor that the decision around school entrance for vaccines rests where it did before, which is with the state level, the county level and at the municipal level, if it exists at all.”

That state laws establish vaccination requirements is clearly stated on the CDC website.

“These laws often apply not only to children attending public schools but also to those attending private schools and day care facilities,” according to the website. “All states provide medical exemptions, and some state laws also offer exemptions for religious and/or philosophical reasons. State laws also establish mechanisms for enforcement of school vaccination requirements and exemptions.”

In Maryland, all children must have the required State of Maryland immunizations in order to attend school. But the COVID-19 vaccine is currently not on the list in Maryland. Parents are responsible for providing proof of the required immunizations prior to their child attending, or proof of an appointment for necessary immunizations within 20 calendar days of the first day of school.

Prior to the start of the current school year, about 44.9 percent of Maryland children aged 5-11 were fully vaccinated against COVID, with an additional 15.5 percent having received a single recommended booster, according to the Maryland Department of Health.

For children 12-17, about 78.8 percent were fully vaccinated before school started, with 36.4 percent having received a booster. Among Marylanders aged 6 months to 4 years, about 9.6 percent had gotten at least one shot of the Moderna and Pfizer pediatric vaccines authorized in June, with 2.6 percent fully vaccinated against COVID.

Among those piling on Carlson after Tuesday’s broadcast was Dr. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Topical Medicine.

“Actually, the CDC clearly says that ‘state laws establish vaccination requirements’ and Fox News knows this,” Hotez wrote on Twitter. “Guessing just another antivaccine dog whistle for their ratings.”

Tara Smith, a professor of epidemiology at Kent State University College of Public Health, also called out Carlson.

“Misinformation,” she tweeted. “The CDC does not decide which vaccines are mandatory for school attendance in kids. That’s left to each state, which is why they are not uniform across the country.”

Voices for Vaccines, a family-led vaccine advocacy group that uses peer-to-peer conversations about vaccines and the diseases they prevent, explained why the advisory committee’s recommendation matters.

“Please note: this is not how school entry requirements work,” the organization tweeted. “Recommending vaccines makes them available in the Vaccines for Children program, get insurance to pay for them, and makes it easier for people to get compensated for possible injuries.”

The action Thursday merely makes the COVID-19 shots part of the CDC children’s vaccine program, which provides many types of free inoculations to millions of kids every year.