An advisory committee to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Thursday for the company to update its recommended vaccination schedules for uploading the COVID-19 vaccine, adding it to children’s schedules.
But before the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices vote, false claims that this would mean the vaccine would go to school were widely spread.
In reality, the CDC does have the authority to set vaccination needs at school, and the vote does impose the vaccine for schoolchildren. That is a resolution left to the states.
Here are the facts.
CLAIM: If the CDC adds the COVID-19 vaccine to children’s immunization schedule, the shots will be for school attendance.
THE FACTS: The false claim gained momentum after it was shared through Fox News host Tucker Carlson this week.
“CDC is about to include the covid vaccine in the youth vaccination program, which would make vax mandatory for youth to attend school,” Carlson tweeted Tuesday night. The tweet included a segment of his screen where he started making the same claim. .
Another popular tweet also claimed that the CDC committee’s vote would make the vaccine “mandatory for enrollment. “
But the public fitness company doesn’t meet the needs for school vaccines.
“States have the strength to enact state laws requiring vaccination, the CDC,” said Wendy Mariner, professor emerita of fitness, ethics and human rights law at Boston University. “ACIP has the strength to legislate. “
CDC spokeswoman Kate Grusich told The Associated Press in an email that the company “only makes recommendations for vaccine use, while school-based vaccination needs are decided through state or local jurisdictions. “
Grusich explained that the action aims to expedite medical recommendation for healthcare providers by adding COVID-19 vaccines to a single list of all recently approved, approved and routine vaccines.
“It should be noted that there are no adjustments in the COVID-19 vaccination policy,” he said.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices is an expert organization that advises CDC on vaccines. His advice to update the calendars, which included other revisions, has yet to be officially followed by the company and the replaced calendars may not take effect until 2023, Grusich said.
Fox News referred the AP to a Carlson review segment Wednesday night, in which he reviewed the issue and claimed the CDC was “lying. “Carlson said that “more than a dozen states stick to the CDC’s immunization schedule for needs, not suggestions, needs, for young people to be educated. “
“For example, the Virginia Department of Health mandates that ‘vaccines be administered according to the CDC schedule,'” he said. He cited Massachusetts as another example.
But those states don’t list every vaccine on the schedule in their school requirements.
Virginia, for example, doesn’t want the annual flu shot to go to school, even if the vaccine appears to be on the CDC’s schedule. Neither does Massachusetts.
A Virginia Department of Health spokeswoman, Maria Reppas, said in an email that “there is no direct and rapid effect on the addition of the COVID-19 vaccine to the vaccination schedule over mandatory school vaccinations in Virginia. “Such adjustments to the needs of the school would require legislative or regulatory action.
Dr. William Schaffner, a vaccine policy expert and professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said he knew of no state that automatically requires all vaccines on the school calendar.
“These are recommendations for pediatricians and family circle physicians when they care about children,” Schaffner said. “These are just recommendations, there are no automatic mandates to follow. “
Many states have also been reluctant to require the human papillomavirus, or HPV, vaccine, even though it appears to be on the formative years calendar, Schaffner said.
States can use the law to require express vaccines or they can authorize a state company or local fitness entity to require express shots for certain age groups, Mariner said. He added that some states come with personal schools when setting requirements, in other cases, personal schools may also require vaccinations voluntarily.
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This is a component of AP’s efforts to fight widely shared misinformation, adding running with outside corporations and organizations to load factual context into misleading content circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.