One Vaccine-Schedule Change That Actually Makes Sense

"For decades, leading health experts, immunologists, and pediatricians have carefully reviewed new data and evidence as part of the immunization recommendation process, helping to keep newborns, infants, and children protected from diseases they could be exposed to in the United States as they develop and grow. Today's decision, which was based on a brief review of other countries' practices, upends this deliberate scientific process."

"The human-papillomavirus (H.P.V.) vaccine, which protects against cervical cancer, was previously given as a series of two or three vaccinations; now it will be just one. The move might at first sound like little more than a reduced hassle-and maybe reckless, since there was good evidence in support of the three-shot regimen-but outside the U.S., in nineteen countries that switched to a one-dose regimen, the change led to some 18.5 million additional girls being vaccinated, averting an estimated three hundred thousand cases"

On January 5th, the Department of Health and Human Services removed multiple vaccines from the universally recommended childhood schedule, including hepatitis A and B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza, and respiratory syncytial virus, following an earlier removal of the COVID vaccine. The change drew strong criticism for abandoning standard scientific review processes. Routine childhood vaccinations have prevented an estimated 1.1 million deaths and thirty-two million hospitalizations over about thirty years in the United States. The schedule does include a major positive change: the HPV vaccine will be a single dose, a shift that boosted uptake in nineteen countries and averted many cases of cervical cancer.

Read at The New Yorker