More blue states are breaking from the Trump administration and forging their own paths on vaccine policies, moves that a Biden-era official said could weaken a public health response, Axios reported Friday.
A West Coast Health Alliance and a similar movement in the Northeast come after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. last week rescinded emergency use authorizations for COVID-19 vaccines and ended the FDA’s broader authorization of the shots, limiting use to people at higher risk of severe illness.
Since then, pharmacy chain CVS has cut back on locations where the updated annual COVID-19 vaccine will be offered. The company decided it would not offer the vaccine in 16 states, citing the current “regulatory environment.”
Blue states are responding with their own policies and, in some cases, banding together to ensure availability for their residents:
- Hawaii joined the West Coast Health Alliance of California, Oregon, and Washington to coordinate on vaccine access and unified recommendations.
- Health officials from eight Northeastern states also recently met to discuss taking similar action on vaccine recommendations.
- New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order on Friday authorizing pharmacists in the state to administer COVID-19 vaccinations to anyone who wants a shot.
- New Mexico’s health department last week issued a public health order to ensure that all residents can obtain COVID-19 vaccines.
- Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey announced Thursday that she’s requiring health insurers to cover vaccines recommended by the state health department, not solely the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
- Illinois has its own vaccine advisory committee and is reportedly planning to buy COVID vaccines in bulk directly from the pharmaceutical companies.
“Any public health response that is dependent on a patchwork of state actions is going to necessarily be less effective and less efficient” than a federal policy, former general counsel to the Department of Health and Human Services in the Biden administration Samuel Bagenstos told Axios.
Further, the Trump administration said Americans have already seen the results when blue states set their own policies on critical health matters.
“Democrat-run states that pushed unscientific school lockdowns, toddler mask mandates, and draconian vaccine passports during the COVID era completely eroded the American people’s trust in public health agencies,” HHS communications director Andrew Nixon told Axios in a statement.
Information from Reuters and the Associated Press was used in this report.
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