Less than a month after extending the deadline, Massachusetts is abandoning its state flu vaccine requirement for students.
The state Department of Public Health said on Friday afternoon that it is removing the vaccination requirement – which applies to all children over the age of 6 months who attend day care centers, preschools, kindergartens, elementary schools and middle school or college in Massachusetts – due to the “moderate flu season and incipient efforts to administer the COVID-19 vaccine.
“Preliminary data shows that this has been a mild flu season so far, presumably because people have received their seasonal flu vaccine and have adhered to mask use and social distance due to COVID-19,” said DPH in a statement. communicated. “Given the intensive efforts of the entire Community in relation to the COVID-19 vaccination, DPH wishes to ease the burden of obtaining influenza vaccination and focus on continuing our COVID-19 vaccination efforts.”
Massachusetts became the only state in the country to enforce the flu vaccine requirement in August, due to concerns that the traditional influenza season, coinciding with the second peak of COVID-19, could overwhelm hospitals.
However, although the coronavirus did see a significant resurgence during the fall and winter, health experts said that business restrictions and social distance due to COVID-19 suppressed the transmission of other less contagious respiratory diseases.
The state set a deadline of December 31 for students to receive the flu vaccine, but extended it last month until February 28, before withdrawing it on Friday. The mandate also sparked some small but passionate protests from some parents and activists.
While it is no longer needed, DPH officials say they continue to “strongly recommend” that everyone over six months old receive a seasonal flu vaccine each year. Experts fear that the mild flu season could mean a recovery in later flu cases (this exact situation already seems to be happening in Australia, as The Washington Post reported Tuesday)
“Since we haven’t been exposed to them this much, they can take their toll next year,” said Dr. Katherine Gergen Barnett, program director for the Department of Family Medicine at the Boston Medical Center, told NBC Boston earlier this week.
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