Tag: vaccines

DPH: Flu vaccine required for all students of Massachusetts schools

Flu shots will now be required for all students in Massachusetts schools, from child care through colleges, the Department of Public Health announced Wednesday.

Students older than six months will have to be vaccinated by Dec. 31, unless either a medical or religious exemption is provided.

“The new vaccine requirement is an important step to reduce flu-related illness and ​the overall impact of respiratory illness during the COVID-19 pandemic,” officials wrote in an announcement of the new policy.

Students who are homeschooled are exempt from the policy, but health officials said students at elementary and secondary schools that are using a remote learning model are not exempt.

College or university students who are entirely off-campus will also be exempt from the mandate.

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Government Must Not Assign a Coronavirus Vaccine By Race

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Afederal advisory committee recommending priorities for the eventual distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine has floated a very bad idea: according priority to some beneficiaries over others because of their race. If implemented, the regime would very likely be struck down by courts as unconstitutional. But even aside from that, racial preferences on this question would constitute a dangerous betrayal of the neutrality and impartiality citizens have a right to expect from government.

The Centers for Disease Control’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) has been examining vaccine priority issues since the spring. Last month the New York Times reported that ACIP’s members were weighing what the Times called the “contentious option” of “putting Black and Latino people, who have disproportionately fallen victim to COVID-19, ahead of others in the population.” A more recent Washington Post report confirms that the idea is still under consideration.

It’s coming from some well-placed players, too. One is Dr. José R. Romero, who chairs the committee and is one of the four members detailed to examine the priority issue; he is also chief medical officer of the Arkansas Department of Health. The Times quotes him as saying, “They are groups that need to be moved to the forefront, in my opinion.”

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Horseshoe crab blood is key to making a COVID-19 vaccine—but the ecosystem may suffer.

Each spring, guided by the full moon, hundreds of thousands of horseshoe crabs clamber onto beaches across the U.S. mid-Atlantic to lay their eggs. For hungry birds, it’s a cornucopia. For drug companies, it’s a crucial resource for making human medicines safe.

That’s because these animals’ milky-blue blood provides the only known natural source of limulus amebocyte lysate, a substance that detects a contaminant called endotoxin. If even tiny amounts of endotoxin—a type of bacterial toxin—make their way into vaccines, injectable drugs, or other sterile pharmaceuticals such as artificial knees and hips, the results can be deadly.

“All pharmaceutical companies around the world rely on these crabs. When you think about it, your mind is boggled by the reliance that we have on this primitive creature,” says Barbara Brummer, state director for The Nature Conservancy in New Jersey.

Every year, pharmaceutical companies round up half a million Atlantic horseshoe crabs, bleed them, and return them to the ocean— after which many will die. This practice, combined with overharvesting of the crabs for fishing bait, has caused a decline in the species in the region in the past few decades.

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States have authority to fine or jail people who refuse coronavirus vaccine, attorney says

As drugmakers race to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus, several legal questions are emerging: could the government require people to get it? Could people who refuse to roll up their sleeves get banned from stores or lose their jobs?

The short answer is yes, according to Dov Fox, a law professor and the director of the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics at the University of San Diego.

“States can compel vaccinations in more or less intrusive ways,” he said in an interview. “They can limit access to schools or services or jobs if people don’t get vaccinated. They could force them to pay a fine or even lock them up in jail.”

Fox noted authorities in the United States have never attempted to jail people for refusing to vaccinate, but other countries like France have adopted the aggressive tactic.

The legal precedent dates back to 1905. In a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, the court ruled Massachusetts had the authority to fine people who refused vaccinations for smallpox.

That case formed the legal basis for vaccine requirements at schools, and has been upheld in subsequent decisions.
“Courts have found that when medical necessity requires it, the public health outweighs the individual rights and liberties at stake,” Fox said.

In 2019, New York City passed an ordinance that fined people who refused a measles vaccination.

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States have authority to fine or jail people who refuse coronavirus vaccine, attorney says

 As drugmakers race to develop a vaccine against the coronavirus, several legal questions are emerging: could the government require people to get it? Could people who refuse to roll up their sleeves get banned from stores or lose their jobs?

The short answer is yes, according to Dov Fox, a law professor and the director of the Center for Health Law Policy and Bioethics at the University of San Diego.

“States can compel vaccinations in more or less intrusive ways,” he said in an interview. “They can limit access to schools or services or jobs if people don’t get vaccinated. They could force them to pay a fine or even lock them up in jail.”

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Abortion opponents protest COVID-19 vaccines’ use of fetal cells

Senior Catholic leaders in the United States and Canada, along with other antiabortion groups, are raising ethical objections to promising COVID-19 vaccine candidates that are manufactured using cells derived from human fetuses electively aborted decades ago. They have not sought to block government funding for the vaccines, which include two candidate vaccines that the Trump administration plans to support with an investment of up to $1.7 billion, as well as a third candidate made by a Chinese company in collaboration with Canada’s National Research Council (NRC). But they are urging funders and policymakers to ensure that companies develop other vaccines that do not rely on such human fetal cell lines and, in the United States, asking the government to “incentivize” firms to only make vaccines that don’t rely on fetal cells.

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