CHICAGO — Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill Tuesday that he said will protect Illinois residents from “junk science” undermining evidence-based vaccine regulations at the federal level.
The bill will allow the Illinois Department of Public Health director, currently Dr. Sameer Vohra, to issue state-specific guidelines with input from the state’s Immunization Advisory Committee, a group of doctors, nurses and public health professionals that advise the director.
It will also allow the committee to issue guidance that differs from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, including to approve vaccines for seasonal respiratory illnesses including the flu, COVID-19 and RSV and routine vaccines MMR and Hepatitis B vaccines.
IDPH will now be able to form guidelines using a combination of the CDC’s guidance, recommendations from the World Health Organization and other medical and scientific disease prevention experts — and require that immunizations recommended by the state be covered by state-regulated insurance plans.
House bill sponsor Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, emphasized the timeliness of the issue, referencing breaking news from Tuesday morning that indicated the CDC vaccine advisory committee planned to discuss child immunization schedules and the efficacy of Hepatitis B vaccines when it meets on Dec. 4 and Dec. 5.
“We have relied on this federal system for trusted medical guidance in 1930,” Morgan said. “And it's been eviscerated. The trust is gone.”
The state’s advisory committee, which will meet again later this week, is chaired by Marielle Fricchione, a pediatric infectious diseases doctor at Rush Children’s Hospital. She said the new changes will make the committee more diverse, nimble and empowered.
That’s because it requires more voices from around the state to be heard, allows the committee to follow the science in real time as more data becomes available and to step in if an IDPH director diverges from the committee’s guidelines, Fricchione said.
Fricchione added that the scientific innovation behind vaccines was worth protecting, recounting a story of a 2-year-old girl who she treated at Rush Hospital over Thanksgiving.
“I can give a kid a vaccine one day, they walk out of the clinic, and every day, that vaccine is protecting them from suffering, from preventable diseases that generation of Americans were terrified of,” Fricchione said.
Partisan vaccine debate
Illinois legislators passed House Bill 767 on a party-line vote this October during the annual fall veto session. Republican legislators largely opposed the bill for its political undertones.
The new law follows a September executive order in which Pritzker directed IDPH to develop its own vaccine guidelines after the Food and Drug Administration withdrew approval of COVID-19 vaccines for children, pregnant patients and adults under age 65 without underlying risk conditions.
Read more: Illinois to issue its own vaccine guidelines | Illinois lawmakers approve state-specific vaccine guidelines
Before signing the bill, Pritzker took aim at U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who built his campaign on questioning the efficacy of vaccines and arguing that they cause autism, despite the lack of credible evidence supporting the assertions.
“While RFK Jr. and his QAnon-inspired colleagues spreading conspiracy theories and dangerous misinformation about vaccines are running around Washington, Illinois is stepping up to protect the health of our people,” Pritzker said.
Tripti Kataria, president-elect of the Illinois State Medical Society, applauded the bill’s signing and said she understood the amount of medical information could be confusing. She encouraged anyone concerned about vaccines to discuss it with their physicians.
Illinoisians have followed the science in the past, Pritzker said, with a 50% increase in measles vaccine uptake after the first cases were reported in April.
“We trust science here in Illinois,” Pritzker said. “So let today be a reminder to anyone listening, especially now in the midst of the flu season: Get yourself vaccinated, get your children vaccinated. Encourage your friends, especially our seniors, to get vaccinated. It is safe, it is effective, and it's the right thing to do.”
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.
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