In May 2021, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine (brand name Comirnaty) against COVID-19 was authorized for use in much of the population, including children and teens 12 years and older. The pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Moderna are now conducting vaccine trials in children as young as 6 months.
These kids could have vaccine access by the end of 2021. However, several states such as Florida and Utah have already established laws banning public schools and universities from requiring students to have a COVID-19 vaccine before enrolling.
In response, pediatricians and public health experts point out that vaccine mandates for students are already in place for diseases other than COVID-19, and have been for a considerable length of time.
The first vaccine mandate in US schools was enacted in Massachusetts in the 1850s—more than 150 years ago. This mandate was put forth to prevent the spread of smallpox. Measles became schools’ next adversary in the 1960s. “We knew that transmission in schools was a really big problem. When we took a look at jurisdictions that were strictly enforcing mandates that excluded unvaccinated kids, it showed that mandates were really effective because the states that strictly enforced the school entry requirements had low incident rates,” says Angela Shen, ScD, MPH, visiting research scientist at the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
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By 1977, the US federal government enacted the Childhood Immunization Initiative. There are seven diseases for which children routinely receive vaccines; the initiative aimed to increase the rate of those vaccinations in children. These diseases include measles and tetanus. All 50 states adopted mandatory school vaccinations at this time.
Today, all 50 states, the district of Columbia, and US territories have vaccination requirements for kids to attend school and childcare facilities, established by state law. It is because of vaccine requirements that the diseases HIB and meningococcal meningitis—which are fatal in children—are now rare. Dr. Sara Siddiqui, a pediatrician at NYU Langone’s Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital, points out another example of vaccine mandates’ benefits: Prevnar, a pneumococcal vaccine, has prevented many hospitalizations in children under 3. Additionally, “Influenza vaccination prevents hospitalization and severe disease in children every year,” Siddiqui says.
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For nearly two centuries, kids in the US have been required to get vaccinated for diseases aside from COVID-19 before enrolling in school. These vaccine requirements continue to be an important way to keep student communities safe and healthy. Student COVID-19 vaccine requirements are no exception and will do much to save children’s lives and improve medical wellbeing in the long run.
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