Fact check: States determine vaccine requirements for public schools, not the CDC

Sudiksha Kochi, USA TODAY
·5 min read
35

The claim: CDC vote would mandate vaccines in public schools

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice, a committee within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, voted in favor of adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the agency's 2023 childhood and adult immunization schedules at an Oct. 20 meeting.

Prior to the meeting, some social media users claimed such a vote would mandate vaccines in public schools.

"URGENT – The CDC at it's ACIP meeting TOMORROW is voting to add the POISONOUS CV9TEEN shot to the childhood schedule making it mandatory for CHILDREN in school!" reads an Instagram post shared Oct. 19.

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The post generated nearly 2,000 likes in less than a week.

But the claim is baseless.

The CDC does not have the power to mandate vaccines in public schools, numerous health officials told USA TODAY. The agency can only provide recommendations. It is up to the states to choose whether to follow them.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media users who shared the claim for comment.

States determine vaccine requirements

The advisory committee's immunization schedules are simply voluntary guidelines intended to inform which vaccinations doctors recommend to patients at various ages, Lindsay Wiley, a health law expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, told USA TODAY in an email.

It is up to state legislatures and health departments to make choices about vaccination requirements for school attendance, Wiley said. The process of adding a vaccine to the required immunization list for school attendance varies from state to state, depending on how much leeway the state legislature has given state agencies or local districts.

The CDC wrote in an Oct. 20 press release that it only makes recommendations for vaccines, and that school-entry vaccination requirements are determined by either state or local jurisdictions.

“There are no changes in COVID-19 vaccine policy, and today’s action simply helps streamline clinical guidance for healthcare providers by including all currently licensed, authorized and routinely recommended vaccines in one document,” the statement says.

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Not all states follow the guidelines set forth by the CDC, either.

For example, human papillomavirus vaccines are on the childhood immunization schedule, but as of July 2021, only three states – Hawaii, Virginia and Rhode Island – and Washington, D.C., require the shot for school entry, according to immunize.org.

"I’m not aware of any state that makes every vaccine on the ACIP (advisory committee) schedule mandatory for school attendance," Wiley said.

As of Oct. 3, only Washington, D.C., has a COVID-19 vaccine mandate in schools, with noncompliant students excluded from schools beginning in January 2023, according to the National Academy of State Health Policy. California has a pending COVID-19 student vaccine mandate that will take effect in July 2023.

And other states have been clear in their opposition to a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for schools. For example, Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo tweeted prior to the CDC's meeting that nothing will change in Florida regardless of whether the CDC adds COVID-19 vaccines to its immunization schedule. In fact, he has recommended that healthy kids do not get the COVID-19 vaccine,

The Associated Press and the Washington Post also debunked the claim.

COVID-19 shot is not poisonous

None of the COVID-19 vaccines are poisonous, according to Dr. Patrick Jackson, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Virginia Health.

Numerous clinical studies and CDC reports demonstrate the effectiveness of the vaccine in both adults and children. The Food and Drug Administration has also found the vaccines meet its safety and effectiveness standards, the CDC says on its website.

Nearly "all the ingredients in COVID-19 vaccines are also ingredients in many foods," such as fats, sugars and salts, according to the CDC. And only in rare cases do people experience adverse events after getting the shot.

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USA TODAY has debunked other claims related to the COVID-19 vaccine, including baseless assertions that spike proteins from the vaccine are dangerous toxins that cause damage in the body and that the Moderna vaccine has a poisonous SM-102 chemical in it.

Our rating: False

Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that a CDC vote would mandate vaccines in public schools. The CDC voted to add COVID-19 vaccines to the agency's childhood immunization schedule. But regardless of the vote, the agency can't mandate vaccines in public schools. It is up to the states to choose which vaccines are mandatory.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Fact check: States determine vaccine requirements for public schools