West Coast States Plan to Offer Their Own Vaccine Guidance Amid Upheaval at the CDC
California, Oregon, and Washington announced on Wednesday that they are creating a health alliance that will share “credible information” about vaccine safety and efficacy, at a time when the federal health agency tasked with releasing vaccine guidance has been thrown into chaos.
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In a joint statement, the Democratic governors of the three West Coast states said the alliance was meant “to ensure residents remain protected by science, not politics.” The governors slammed the Trump Administration’s “dismantling” of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“President Donald Trump’s mass firing of CDC doctors and scientists—and his blatant politicization of the agency—is a direct assault on the health and safety of the American people,” the governors said. “The CDC has become a political tool that increasingly peddles ideology instead of science, ideology that will lead to severe health consequences. California, Oregon, and Washington will not allow the people of our states to be put at risk.”
The alliance, they said, will ensure that public health policies in the three states are based on information from “trusted scientists, clinicians, and other public health leaders.” While each state may embark on independent strategies depending on its own laws, geographies, and residents, the governors said the joint alliance will “start coordinating health guidelines by aligning immunization recommendations informed by respected national medical organizations.”
“This will allow residents to receive consistent, science-based recommendations they can rely on—regardless of shifting federal actions,” the governors said.
Read More: What to Know About Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine Right Now
The announcement comes amid ongoing turmoil at the CDC. Last week, the White House said that it had fired then-CDC Director Susan Monarez, though she refused to step down from her position. Monarez had only been in the role for about a month. At least four other top officials resigned from the agency after Monarez’s firing. The Trump Administration tapped Jim O’Neill, a former Silicon Valley executive with no formal medical or scientific training and the deputy to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to become the new acting leader of the CDC.
Attorneys representing Monarez said that she was “targeted” after she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.”
Kennedy, a prominent vaccine skeptic, has led a number of changes to the country’s immunization policy since he was confirmed to be the country’s health secretary earlier this year. Last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said when authorizing updated COVID-19 vaccines that the shots were only approved for people ages 65 and older, or people who have an increased risk of developing severe cases of the virus—a dramatic shift from previous guidance. In May, Kennedy said the CDC would stop recommending COVID-19 vaccines for pregnant women and healthy children. Respected medical associations, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have offered their own recommendations, diverging from federal guidance.
In June, Kennedy removed all 17 members of a committee that provides immunization recommendations to the CDC. The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington condemned the move at the time.
Hundreds of public health workers have criticized Kennedy, signing a letter last month that urged him to “stop spreading inaccurate health information” and protect staffers, in the aftermath of a shooting at the CDC headquarters a few weeks earlier. The public health workers said the shooting “came amid growing mistrust in public institutions, driven by politicized rhetoric that has turned public health professionals from trusted experts into targets of villainization—and now, violence.”