The vaccine advisory panel for the CDC “fine-tuned its COVID vaccine recommendations and narrowly rejected its working group’s proposal to require a doctor’s prescription for the vaccine.” CIDRAP has the news.
The measure that would have added barriers to vaccination “was a proposal that would have advised states and localities to require a doctor’s prescription for COVID vaccine for all groups, which in the initial vote was a 6-to-6 tie.” Liaison members and some members of ACIP itself throughout the proceedings raised concerns about the “lack and quality of evidence” backing the proposals.
Many of the members who voted against the main measure “worried that a prescription would be a barrier to immunization, especially for people who don’t have regular doctors and those in underserved areas, many of whom they said are in the groups at higher risk for severe COVID illness. They also aired concerns about adding an extra burden to already busy doctor’s offices. Those who voted for the measure, however, said the doctor’s prescription was needed to ensure that patients are adequately informed of the risks and benefits of vaccination.”
Other measures addressed by the group included deciding that “adults age 65 and older should be vaccinated based on their own assessment and emphasized that, for people ages 6 months to 64 years old, the vaccination benefit is most favorable for those with underlying health conditions.” Members of the panel (handpicked by HHS secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.) trying to scale back access to the COVID vaccine focused on “the safety concerns, the effectiveness of the vaccines, a purported lack of research, and several uncertainties, including whether the vaccine causes long-term health problems that are similar to long COVID.”
