CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It remains to be seen if the state Senate will agree with the House of Delegates and approve a bill that would change certain requirements when it comes to getting children vaccinated.
House Bill 5105 first removed vaccine requirements for students attending virtual public schools, then was expanded to allow private schools to adopt their own policies and then was opened up to parents citing religious reasons to opt out of vaccination requirements at any school in the state.
The bill is currently in the possession of the Senate Health Committee. Health leaders from across the state have been commenting on the bill.
West Virginia University Chancellor and Executive Dean for Health Sciences Dr. Clay Marsh said vaccines have been proven to improve quality of life and health outcomes for more than 100 years.
“Worldwide polio affected about 500,000 people as recently as 1980,” Marsh said last week on MetroNews “Talkline.” “Now, it’s just a handful of cases internationally and none in the United States, and smallpox has been eradicated because of immunizations.”
Berkeley and Morgan County Health Department Director Bill Kearns said getting the proper vaccines is about keeping children safe.
“Immunizations are a vital part of our children growing up. You get them immunized that throughout time have killed people,” Kearns said recently during an appearance on the Panhandle News Network.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention currently report 35 cases of measles in 35 states, most notably Pennsylvania and Florida. Pennsylvania reports nine cases, eight of them in Philadelphia, and in Florida, where there are eight cases, state Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo called measles “the most infectious human pathogen they know of” and compared it to a heat seeking rocket in being able to find the unvaccinated.
“When we look at Pennsylvania right now and we look at Florida, we’re seeing outbreaks of measles, which is a highly contagious illness that in vaccinated children basically does not happen.” Marsh said.
A report from the World Health Organization estimates around 128,000 people died in 2021, and many more suffered complications like inflammation of the brain, pneumonia, and encephalitis.
“In 2019, there were about 1,300 cases of measles in our country, and 90 percent of those people who were infected in our country in 2019 were not vaccinated,” Marsh said.
The vaccine requirements set the stage for what officials call “community immunity.” When enough people in a community receive a vaccination, sickness and disease do not have free access from person-to-person, keeping infection rates as low as possible.
“We’re really immunizing our children and our population to try to protect the most vulnerable and try to protect the complications that happen,” Marsh said.
Bill sponsor, Delegate Laura Kimble, R-Harrison, said before the House vote last Monday, the arguments against the exceptions amount to a belief that “herd immunity is crucial, so important in fact that the state of West Virginia should continue to use the force of law to coerce parents to have their children vaccinated without exceptions or exemptions.”
She continued, “The stated reason to require most vaccinations of children, public safety, which can only be achieved by herd immunity is disingenuous, illogical and ultimately contrary to what we claim to be most important.”
West Virginia has some of the highest immunization rates for children, Kearns said he can’t understand why lawmakers would be interested in going the other direction.
“West Virginia does it right. Other states look at else and want to model their behaviors after West Virginia,” he said. “With this, we are going from one of the strongest states to one of the weakest when it comes to immunizations.”
Kearns is urging residents to take note of how their representatives in Charleston have voted on the issue.
“You can look on the roll call and see how your representative voted,” Kearns said. “Then you can say, ‘Well, maybe that representative didn’t care about my child’s health,’ maybe they did, maybe they had other reasons why they voted. This is a medical issue and we want to keep our children safe.”
The 60-day legislative session is set to end Saturday night at midnight.
Panhandle News Network Reporter Marsha Kavalek contributed to this story.