{"id":83199,"date":"2025-12-05T20:53:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-05T20:53:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/83199\/"},"modified":"2025-12-05T20:53:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T20:53:06","slug":"la-county-to-stick-to-existing-hepatitis-b-vaccine-guidance-nbc-los-angeles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/83199\/","title":{"rendered":"LA County to stick to existing hepatitis B vaccine guidance \u2013 NBC Los Angeles"},"content":{"rendered":"

Los Angeles County and California public health officials will continue to recommend hepatitis B vaccinations<\/a> for newborns at birth, despite the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>\u2019s decision to roll back on its guidance<\/a>, the LA County Department of Public Health announced Friday.<\/p>\n

For decades, parents have been recommended to give their newborns the first dose of the vaccine against hepatitis B, a viral liver infection without a cure, within the first 24 hours of their birth. After the first dose, children typically get the second dose at 1 to 2 months, and the third between 6 to 18 months of age.<\/p>\n

But now under the leadership of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., anti-vaccine activist, the CDC will give more control to mothers: if women test negative for hepatitis B, they can decide with their doctor whether to give the first dose until after the baby turns at least 2-months-old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hours after the CDC advisory panel voted on the new recommendations, the LA County Department of Public Health said it is following \u201cthe existing\u201d guidelines<\/a>, giving all babies hepatitis B vaccine \u201cas early as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no modifications to immunization schedules or vaccine availability for Los Angeles County residents, at this time,\u201d the public health department said in a statement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

LA County public health officials also went on to slam the CDC advisory committee’s vote, saying it \u201cnot based on new evidence suggesting that hepatitis B vaccine birth dose is unsafe or ineffective.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAll existing data suggest that the universal birth dose of hepatitis B vaccine is consistently safe and results in life-long protection after the vaccine series is completed,\u201d the department added.<\/p>\n

There has been only one known perinatal hepatitis B infection in the past five years in LA County, the public health department said, contributing largely to the universal birth dose of the hepatitis B vaccine.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The LA County agency also warned if babies contract hepatitis B, they will face lifelong health consequences, with up to 90% developing chronic hepatitis infection and at least 25% dying prematurely from cirrhosis or hepatocellular cancer, a type of liver cancer.<\/p>\n

Public health officials also alerted that having a hepatitis B infection at an early age would increase long-term health care costs, including those chronic conditions and cancer treatment as well as transplantation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles County and California public health officials will continue to recommend hepatitis B vaccinations for newborns at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[48,6105,52,51,47,50,49,5405],"class_list":{"0":"post-83199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-la","9":"tag-la-county","10":"tag-la-headlines","11":"tag-la-news","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","14":"tag-los-angeles-news","15":"tag-vaccines"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}