States vary in their vaccine policies that have been wearing this fall, which could affect availability and contradict a lot with centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Juana Summers, host:
Your ability to get a covid shot this fall may depend on where you live. States set up various policies concerning vaccines in response to concerns about federal leadership. Pien Huang de NPR reports.
Pien Huang, Byline: Washington’s state gathers with its neighbors to create an alliance of health of the west coast. Dennis Worsham, Washington health secretary, says it is a preemptive decision.
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Dennis Worsham: We see something that concerns us, and we are not going to wait to see how it goes.
Huang: These concerns include staff and budget cuts in federal health agencies, the dismissal of eminent doctors of the vaccination consultative committees and the dismissal of the new director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The tilting point came last week, says Worsham, when the Food and Drug Administration has set limits to who is eligible for the fall of the fall.
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Worsham: We, as an Alliance, will work together to examine the data that is published in order to make recommendations for people here in the state of Washington, Oregon and California.
Huang: Dr. Erica Pan is director of California Department of Public Health.
Erica Pan: I’m sad that we are in this place where we have to do it.
Huang: But the reason they do, she says, is that vaccines do an excellent job to keep people healthy.
PAN: Vaccines are one of the most important public health interventions in our lives, after sanitation. And they saved, you know, millions of lives. And we want to make sure to continue to do so.
Huang: And the councils of the federal government under the Secretary of Health, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., begin to diverge from those of professional medical groups.
Pan: You know, we have concerns that access and / or recommendations for safe and effective vaccines could change federal level.
Huang: The current CDC vaccine advisory committee has not yet weighed on who should obtain coasty vaccines this fall. In New Mexico, the delay prompted Gina Deblassie, the firm’s health secretary, to issue a public health order to make vaccines widely available in pharmacies.
Gina Deblassie: Vaccines should be received in the state this month. We just want to make sure that we are ready to leave and capable of serving new mexicans.
Huang: Deblassie says that the demand was the highest for 65 and over.
Deblassie: But we want to make it available for those who are in high -risk populations or those who take care of people who are in this high -risk group.
Huang: Massachusetts, who directs public health collaboration in the northeast, announced that it forces insurers to cover the vaccines that the state recommends. While states with democratic governors have zigned to protect access to vaccines, the republican state of Florida in Zagged. Yesterday, at a press conference, Florida surgeon, General Joseph Ladapo, called a poison with vaccinations covers and said that the demanding of slavery.
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Joseph Ladapo: Who am I, as a government or someone else or who am I as a man standing here now, to tell you what you should put in your body?
Huang: Ladapo has announced that Florida will work to end all state vaccination mandates. His office did not respond to an NPR interview request. The Dr. Susan Kansagra, with the association of state and territorial health officials, said that many laws of states are linked to what the CDC advisory committee recommends.
Susan Kansagra: Although there has always been a state of variation by state in the laws on vaccines, what we see now is an amplification of this.
Huang: Given confusion and instability at the federal level, some states turn to other sources for their vaccine recommendations. Kansagra says it can be confusing for consumers.
Kansagra: Talk to your supplier. Get your information from a source of trust around vaccines. And, you know, make sure to understand where to go and your insurance coverage, while we sail in this changing landscape.
Huang: Later this month, state health officials are closely monitoring when the CDC’s reworked vaccine advisory committee will meet to vote on the recommendations for COVID, hepatitis B and certain other vaccines.
Pien Huang, NPR News.
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