EL PASO, Texas (KVIA)– A CDC advisory committee voted to remove its long-standing recommendation that newborns receive the hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours of birth, a guideline in place for more than 30 years.<\/p>\n
Under the new recommendation, the first dose would be given at 2 months of age.<\/p>\n
Rekha Lakshmanan, executive director of The Immunization Partnership, said the move undermines decades of research and places vulnerable infants at risk.<\/p>\n
“We have people who are making decisions who don\u2019t necessarily have the right credentials or the right backgrounds when it comes to vaccines and vaccine policy.\u201d Lakshmanan said<\/p>\n
President Donald Trump praised the committee\u2019s decision on Truth Social, writing \u201cThe CDC Vaccine Committee made a very good decision to END their Hepatitis B Vaccine Recommendation for babies, the vast majority of whom are at NO RISK of Hepatitis B, a disease that is mostly transmitted sexually, or through dirty needles.”<\/p>\n
Lakshmanan said that in Texas, where many women have limited prenatal care, delaying vaccination could leave newborns more vulnerable.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a mom goes to a hospital to give birth to a baby, we may not necessarily know what their status is related to hepatitis B,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She warned that the recommendation could signal broader changes to routine childhood vaccinations. Texas saw a significant measles outbreak earlier this year, resulting in the deaths of two children.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is frustrating and flabbergasting because no child is expendable,\u201d Lakshmanan said. \u201cNo one really knows when someone is going to be at risk or exposed to a vaccine-preventable illness.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EL PASO, Texas (KVIA)– A CDC advisory committee voted to remove its long-standing recommendation that newborns receive the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78332,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[138,140,139],"class_list":["post-78331","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78331","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78331"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78331\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78331"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78331"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78331"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}