Connecticut health officials continue to call out against the latest decision from a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine panel to overturn a longstanding recommendation on hepatitis B vaccines.
The panel, working under Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., decided it was no longer necessary for all babies to get hepatitis B vaccines soon after birth – just babies whose birthing parent tested positive, or if the parent’s status was unknown.
“We are really playing with the lives of our children,” said Dr. Manisha Juthani, commissioner at Connecticut Department of Public Health. “These changes that are being made, we will see the implications of it in children, unfortunately, in the years to come.”
Juthani said Connecticut has had 27 cases of acute hepatitis B infection in the last 10 years in people between the ages of 25 and 65, who may not have been immunized against hepatitis B when they were young, because that was not the policy at the time.
“Now imagine that one of those people is the caregiver of a child … they may not know themselves that they are infected, because a lot of times it can be a silent infection for a long period of time, and it is so infectious that sharing a towel, a small nick, let's say somebody puts their finger in the mouth of a child, or a small abrasion that a child has … you can think of a variety of scenarios where somebody who was infected may come in contact with an unvaccinated child,” she said.
“When you think about the risk benefit, this vaccine has been tested for so many decades now and has been proven to be safe.”
Public health officials are concerned that the federal panel is weakening public trust in science. President Donald Trump has tasked the vaccine panel to overhaul the entire entire vaccine schedule for children.
“I worry for our children in our state,” Juthani said. “We are trying to save them from being exposed to pathogens that used to keep children in the hospital for days and weeks, meningitis, pneumonia, RSV, we have tools to not have that be the outcome for children. And I know parents are just trying to do the right thing by their kids, and I hate to see that we may have to see a backsliding of that trend.”
Connecticut also saw a 6% drop in flu vaccine rates this season compared to last year, according to DPH.
“We know that New York City is seeing a surge, that means we’re around the corner,” she said. “We’re already seeing the uptick in Connecticut. I’m anticipating this is going to be the rise and it is going to peak out through the holiday season. So if you haven’t gotten a flu shot yet, this is your time.”
The number of COVID-19 shots this year also declined. COVID-19 vaccines for children fell by a half from last year. Also, as of Dec. 2, 1,828 cases of measles were confirmed across the U.S., cases including New York, Rhode Island and Vermont, according to the CDC. There have been 46 outbreaks this year, compared to 16 last year.
Measles was eliminated in the U.S. in the early 2000s – there was no sustained transmission for a full year.
“What we have seen this year is we have seen sustained transmission with outbreaks,” Juthani said. There are only eight states that have not had a case yet. Connecticut is still one of them.”
Learn more
Hear the full conversation with Juthani on Connecticut Public’s “Where We Live.”
