A federal vaccine advisory panel voted on Friday to recommend people talk with a clinician before getting a Covid vaccine.
All 12 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) voted unanimously to update COVID-19 guidance so coronavirus vaccinations for all people should be based on “individual-based decision making.”
For individuals aged between six months and 64 years of age, the recommendation advised that vaccinations be based on individual-based decision making along “with an emphasis that the risk-benefit of vaccination is most favorable for individuals who are at an increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease and lowest for individuals who are not at an increased risk, according to the CDC list of COVID-19 risk factors.”
ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff said it was his understanding that this recommendation they voted on would mean that SARS-CoV-2 vaccines would still be covered by insurance. Insurers look to the board’s recommendations to inform their coverage.
The questions they were to vote on were not publicly disclosed until the very end of the meeting.
ACIP member Retsef Levi, professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, led the panel’s discussion on the COVID-19 vaccines.
Levi, a known COVID-19 vaccine opponent and skeptic, was selected to lead the CDC’s COVID-19 working group in August. During the pandemic, Levi called for all COVID-19 programs to be stopped immediately, claiming there was no proof of efficacy and that the vaccines were behind the deaths of children and young people.
Levi presented four questions for the committee to vote on: to recommend the CDC promote six risks and uncertainties he cited in his presentation on Friday; to recommend requiring prescriptions for COVID-19 vaccines; that patients should be informed of the risks of COVID-19 and its vaccination before receiving the shot; and to update the current guidance so that coronavirus vaccinations for all people should be based on “individual-based decision making.”
Members of the working group that Levi leads gave a presentation strongly supporting the continued availability of COVID-19 vaccines, especially for pregnant women, children and seniors.
“In summary, Covid-19 vaccination matters for pregnant women, pediatric patients — especially those less than two years of age — people 65 years and older, those of any age with a weakened immune system or chronic medical conditions and anyone who feels they want protection for themselves or their families,” Henry Bernstein, a member of the COVID-19 working group, said on behalf of himself and two other members of the working group who he described as being in the “minority.”
During the committee’s discussion on Friday, ACIP members spent time speculating on whether the COVID-19 vaccine rewrote human DNA after being administered, whether it could cause lung cancer; of it could cause birth defects.
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