Director of NIH says vaccinating children a way to get back to normal
Now that Pfizer’s Covid vaccine has been approved for children ages 12 to 15, more schools may be able to reopen fully in person this fall.
Yet the question remains whether schools will require students to get vaccinated.
“It’s always better to reinforce positive behavior rather than mandate,” said Bob Bollinger, a professor of infectious diseases at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and inventor of the emocha Health app. “But we have a precedent of requiring vaccinations to go to school.”
In fact, for students enrolled in school, there are many vaccination requirements in place to prevent the spread of diseases such as polio, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough.
All 50 states have at least some vaccine mandates for children attending public schools and even those attending private schools and day-care centers. In every case, there are medical exemptions, and in some cases, there are religious or philosophical exemptions, as well.
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Now that it is approved for middle school-aged students, some states may add Covid-19 to their list of required vaccinations to attend school. In most cases, those vaccination laws would apply to both public and private schools and be subject to the same exemptions, depending on the state.
But it’s more likely it will be left to the schools to decide whether shots will be mandatory.
“Like everything with Covid, this is going to be a school-district-by-school-district decision,” said Sharon Masling, a partner at Washington, D.C.-based law firm Morgan Lewis. Masling has been advising high schools and colleges on how to handle the desire to have students vaccinated before returning to the classroom.
“Some school districts are going to want to be aggressive and see requiring vaccines as the way back to normal, whereas other districts may want to move more slowly, especially in areas where there is a lot of vaccine hesitancy,” she said.
Schools weigh in
The Eatonville School District in Washington state already hosted its own vaccination clinic for high school students soon after eligibility expanded to include everyone over the age of 16.
Ahead of the on-site vaccination day, information was sent to 350 families in the district. Of the 100 parents who followed up, only 50 said they would allow their child to be vaccinated. On the day of the clinic, just 27 of those students showed up.
Although the district will strongly encourage all students to get vaccinated as soon as they are eligible, vaccine hesitancy remains a significant hurdle, according to Eatonville’s superintendent, Krestin Bahr.
That is part of the reason the school district would stop short of mandating vaccinations before returning to school in the fall, Bahr said.
The Eatonville School District in Washington state hosted a vaccination clinic for students soon after eligibility expanded to include everyone over the age of 16.
The Eatonville School District in Washington state hosted a vaccination clinic for students soon after eligibility expanded to include everyone over the age of 16.
Source: The Eatonville School District
Since students have been back in the classroom, “we are seeing a lot of mental health needs,” she said. Their priority is to keep those students in school and there’s a real fear that a requirement will drive some away, she added.
The public-school district in New Canaan, Connecticut, also recently held a vaccination clinic for students over the age of 16 and is poised to offer another one for those 12 and up now that the Food and Drug Administration approved shots for younger adolescents, according to Bryan Luizzi, superintendent of New Canaan Public Schools.
“Getting vaccinated is an extremely high-leverage mitigation strategy, and I am optimistic that the vast majority of eligible students and staff will be vaccinated by the fall,” he said. Still, “I do not anticipate requiring students to get vaccinated before the start of the new year,” Luizzi added.
Superintendents in other parts of the country also say that schoolchildren will be encouraged rather than required to get the Covid-19 vaccine — but for different reasons.
