Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
'There Is No Good Justification' To Split MMR Vaccines, Experts Say
AP: Vaccine-Makers Unlikely To Split MMR Shots Despite Trump's Push
Public health experts have been quick to condemn an executive order from President Donald Trump aimed at upending childhood vaccinations in the U.S., but the biggest obstacles may be the unprecedented financial and logistical challenges it would impose on parents, health providers and drugmakers. Monday’s announcement by the Republican president calls for separating combination shots — including the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine — into separate injections. Appointments for that and other vaccinations should be spaced out whenever possible, the order states. (Perrone, 8/13)
San Francisco Chronicle: California Keeps Childhood Vaccine Rules Despite Trump Order
California is not changing its childhood vaccination recommendations, or its requirement to have health insurers cover the inoculations, after President Donald Trump’s executive order that calls for reducing the number of vaccines U.S. children receive, state health officials say. The executive order, signed this week, calls for scaling back the number of routine childhood vaccinations, splitting the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine into three shots given at separate visits — a vaccine formulation that does not exist — and threatens legal action against states like California that do not allow religious or personal belief exemptions. (Ho, 8/13)
The Hill: Bill Cassidy Says He Trusts New CDC Director To Prioritize Science
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) said he has confidence that new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Erica Schwartz will stand up for science and won’t enforce President Trump’s executive order calling for major changes to the childhood vaccine schedule. “I anticipate Erica Schwartz will do the right thing,” Cassidy, chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” on Thursday. “She made a point that her integrity was not in question, and she’s got the spine of somebody who’s been a senior officer in the Coast Guard.” (Weixel, 8/13)
‘What The Health?’ From KFF Health News: Trump’s Vaccine Agenda
President Donald Trump, apparently unhappy with the slow pace of efforts to change the federal government’s childhood vaccine schedule, issued a new executive order this week that would, if implemented, upend how children are protected from communicable diseases. But there are many obstacles to carrying out the president’s initiative, both legal and political. Meanwhile, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. unveiled proposed new rules for food additives this week, but the rules don’t go as far as many health advocates had hoped. (Rovner, 8/13)
Regarding covid-19 vaccines —
The New York Times: Covid Vaccines Are Not Linked To Miscarriage. Here’s How We Know
Trump administration officials and other prominent Republicans falsely suggested this week that Covid-19 vaccines were linked to miscarriage, seizing misleadingly on old text messages of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s that were recently released by Republican senators. In January 2021, when Covid vaccines had just been released, Dr. Fauci and other Biden administration officials discussed the limitations of the data then available about vaccination during pregnancy, as well as the theoretical risks for pregnant women based on information available at the time. Since then, studies of hundreds of thousands of women have shown that Covid vaccination is not linked to an increased risk of miscarriage, stillbirth or preterm birth. (Astor and Rabin, 8/13)
San Francisco Chronicle: California Anti-Vaxxer’s Religious Defense Falls Flat At Appeals Court
A Marin County woman who worked as a pharmacist rejected her employer’s mandate to be vaccinated against COVID-19 because, she said, her body was “a temple of the Holy Spirit” that must be kept free of harmful substances. A federal appeals court was not convinced. Maria Ledezma had objected to vaccinations for many years, and her employer, Optum Health Services, was entitled to conclude that her objections were based on “personal health preferences and a self-directed judgment about what substances are harmful,” the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Thursday in a 2-1 decision dismissing her suit against the company. (Egelko, 8/13)
CIDRAP: COVID Vaccination May Have Prevented More Than 4,000 Deaths In One Washington County
COVID-19 vaccination may have prevented more than 16,000 hospitalizations and 4,000 deaths in one Washington county during the first eight months of the vaccine rollout, according to a new modeling study published last week in BMC Public Health. (Bergeson, 8/13)
