CDC panel votes to add COVID-19 shots to recommended vaccination schedule

Oct. 20 (UPI) -- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention health advisers voted Thursday to recommend that COVID-19 shots should be added to the recommended immunization schedule for children and adults.

Adults and children 6 months and older should get the vaccine and the boosters, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said in a unanimous vote.

According to NBC News, the advisory committee meets every year to review the vaccination schedule and make updates. The recommendation to add the COVID-19 vaccine to the schedule will go to the full leadership, and the agency is expected to sign off on the recommendation.

"Moving COVID-19 to the recommended immunization schedule does not impact what vaccines are required for school entrance, if any," Dr. Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said during Thursday's meeting.

"Local control matters. And we honor that the decision around school entrance for vaccines rests where it did before, which is with the state level, the county level and at the municipal level, if it exists at all."

Matthew Daley, a panel member and senior investigator at the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado, told Bloomberg that adding the COVID-19 vaccine to the schedule suggests that the virus is here to stay.

Bloomberg also reported that the panel voted in favor of giving low-income children access to COVID-19 vaccinations at no cost under the federal Vaccines for Children Program.