As medical professionals started to gather outside the governor’s reception room to encourage a veto of a bill loosening school vaccination requirements, Gov. Jim Justice said he has not yet made a decision.
“We’re bombarded with calls. Bombarded with calls from docs and all kinds of different people saying ‘What are we doing? What in the world are we doing?'” Justice said in response to a MetroNews question during a news briefing today.
House Bill 5105 removes vaccination requirements for students in virtual public schools, and it also would allow private and parochial schools to set their own standards.
But senators pulled out a provision that would have allowed parents to send in a letter citing a religious exemption to vaccination requirements.
During the final night of the regular legislative session the bill passed the Senate on a 20-12 vote. A majority of delegates then agreed to final passage with just hours remaining.
“I think it’s an initial first step,” Senator Mike Stuart, R-Kanawha, said in an interview that night in the Capitol Rotunda, describing more flexible laws in many other states.
“This is very limited. It goes only to private and virtual schools — a kid in your house or parochial schools where each school is going to be able to determine for their own what the rules happen to be. This is going to be a very small application. I think it’s a first step, it’s a baby step in terms of that term ‘vaccine freedom.’ So I would say for folks not to get overly excited by what it does, and this will let us see the effect over the course of a period of time.”
Recent measles outbreaks have been reported in multiple states, including Florida and Ohio.
The governor made reference to the spread of communicable disease when he discussed the bill today.
“We surely haven’t had a measles outbreak in West Virginia, in you know — I had a gentleman just in my office not long ago talking about when he was growing up one of the family members had polio, and he had issues with that,” Justice said.
“I just need to look at it. I am all for all the understandings of our freedoms. I am not a medical doctor. I do not know the ramifications about the possibilities that can exist or would exist by taking the shots and everything.”
He concluded, “Let me just look at it. I think it’s premature for me to say ‘Yeah, I’ll sign it or we’ll go another way.'”
Medical professionals with the American Academy of Pediatrics and its West Virginia chapter sent a letter to the governor to urge his veto.
“HB 5105 permits not just individual students but entire private and parochial schools from opting out of West Virginia’s long-standing school-entry immunization requirements. In doing so, students, teachers, and the communities in which they are located will be more vulnerable to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable disease,” they wrote.
“We need all the help we can get from policymakers at the state and jurisdictional levels to prevent any additional declines in childhood immunization rates. West Virginia has been a shining example of how strong immunization laws ensure high immunization rates. HB 5105 represents a step in the wrong direction and works counter to our goals to protect our patients and the population at large from preventable and deadly diseases.”
On the night the bill passed the state Senate, Health Committee chairman Mike Maroney spoke against it. Maroney, R-Marshall, is a radiologist.
This week on MetroNews’ “Talkline,” Maroney again argued in favor of vaccines and against the bill.
“The opposition is these diseases. They’re not eradicated any more. Smallpox still is. For instance, polio, which wasn’t around for decades — there was a case in New York where a 22-year-old was paralyzed a few years ago. They’re just a flight away,” Maroney said.
“There are still 700,000 deaths in the world every single year from these diseases that we vaccinate kids for prior to school.”