What Vaccines Do Colleges Require

What Vaccines Do You Need Before College

31 May 16

College-bound students are about to make the transition to adulthood, but that doesn’t mean that they’re done with vaccines. In fact, lifestyle changes and dormitory living can put college students at higher risk for certain infections.

Here’s a list of vaccines that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends for young adults before they go off to college:

Meningococcal conjugate vaccine: In addition to the CDC’s recommendation that students get vaccinated against meningococcal disease before starting college, some states actually make the shot mandatory.

Meningococcal disease is a bacterial infection that can cause meningitis, or a swelling of the membranes that cover the brain or spinal cord. The bacteria that cause the disease can spread from person to person, and the illness can be life-threatening.

People living in close quarters, including college dorms, are at higher risk for becoming infected with meningococcal disease. Outbreaks of the disease have also been reported on college campuses over the last several years, the CDC said. For this reason, the CDC recommends that the vaccine be given to first-year college students.

Whooping cough vaccine booster: Adolescents should get a whooping cough vaccine booster shot when they are 11 to 12 years old. But if they didn’t get this booster shot as a preteen or teen, they should get one dose of Tdap before college, the CDC said.

Do Colleges Require Vaccines Now

Colleges have required vaccines for awhile. For example, the MMR vaccine which protects against measles, mumps and rubella is required at almost 87.5% of colleges in the U.S., according to NPR.

• This is not new, Calcado told NPR. We have a whole portal for uploading your vaccine history and all those types of things. So thats already in place. And actually, this one just adds another vaccine to whats in place today.

Are You Ready To Discover Your College Program

Have you had a COVID-19 vaccine? Depending on your answer, your school may or may not allow you on campus.

Colleges and universities in more than two dozen states will require students to be fully vaccinated when returning to campus in the fall. Schools such as Duke University, University of Notre Dame, and Syracuse University now include a COVID-19 vaccine alongside other typical vaccine requirements.

But mandating the vaccine remains controversial. While widespread vaccination is a critical tool for ending the pandemic and safely reopening schools for fully in-person learning, some people argue that requiring them violates individual rights.

Many schools are undecided on the matter, and others are encouraging students to get vaccinated rather than requiring it. However, some legal experts believe mandatory vaccines could become the norm as more and more students get vaccinated before the first day of class.

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Can Colleges Require Students To Get A Covid

According to attorney Andrew Lacy, there’s no question that colleges and universities can legally require students to get the COVID-19 vaccine. The main reason: legal precedence.

“I don’t think this topic is really up for much debate legally,” Lacy said. “Colleges have required vaccines in the past. There’s just so very few types of exceptions that could actually be applied to someone getting out of taking the vaccine.”

All states require vaccines for public school attendance. Students aren’t allowed on most college campuses unless they get vaccinated against viruses such as Hepatitis B, human papillomavirus , and whooping cough.

The Development Of The Covid

Once the COVID-19 pandemic became a reality, scientists, politicians, and public health officials scrambled for solutions. The disease was an existential threat to both individual and economic health, so the pressure to develop a vaccine was immense. Politicians were eager to have a vaccine as soon as possible, which posed an enormous challenge for scientists and the existing paths toward vaccine acceptance.

Thankfully, there was precedent for the SARS-CoV-2 virus. After all, it is a coronavirus, which was already familiar to scientists. In fact, the so-called common cold is a variety of coronavirus. However, the new variant posed unique challenges. Some researchers decided that they needed a way to tell the body how to recognize and respond to the virus’ spike proteins, a new adaptation that allowed this novel virus to be more contagious than some previous coronaviruses . Normally they might produce mass quantities of the proteins and use them in the vaccination shots. Unfortunately, that would take entirely too long. Not only were people dying in huge numbers, but there were political and other forces urging for a fast solution.

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Which Colleges Require The Covid

Most colleges and universities already require vaccination for diseases such as mumps, rubella, tetanus, hepatitis, and more. Vaccination has also been a part of international travel for decades, so vaccines being important to travel is nothing new either. The COVID-19 vaccine does rely on relatively new medical technology, which has given some pause. It’s thus important to review a range of sources to determine what course of action is best. You can also choose to take a vaccine that relies on older technology but can still offer protection. Be aware that many sources skew their reporting to suit a political agenda, which should be distinct from those that reflect the relevant scientific research.

Here is a list of colleges and universities by state that are requiring coronavirus vaccinations indicates requiring the booster shot. List of colleges is courtesy of University Business):

• California College of the Arts
• California Institute of Integral Studies
• California Institute of Technology

Religious And Medical Exemptions

Feldman also expects resistant students to try and take advantage of state laws that allow individuals to refuse vaccinations for religious or medical reasons. He says it is relatively easy for students to use these exceptions if they wish.

“Exactly zero proof is required. All you need to do is use the word ‘religion’ to have that exemption triggered in New Jersey, for example, at Rutgers,” Feldman explains, “Forty-fiveof the 50 states maintain religious exemptions. California and New York have dropped them in the past five or so years, and so you no longer have religious exemptions to being vaccinated in those states. I personally think that’s exactly the right move because I’ve not ever been shown anything persuasive about any religion that suggests being required to be vaccinated requires followers to do something that would be against their religion. And what’s happened is that people just claim a religious exemption if they don’t want to get vaccinated.”

While many schools will accept these exceptions, experts tell CNBC Make It that some schools may choose to keep unvaccinated students off campus.

“The question is, at Rutgers, for example, where students exercise the exemptions that they’re allowed to exercise, either religious or medical and don’t get vaccinated then will they be allowed back on campus?” says Feldman. “Or will they not be allowed on campus? And what’s Rutgers’ legal responsibility to provide accommodation for them?”

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Here Are The Massachusetts Colleges Requiring Students Staff To Get Covid

At least 65 of Massachusetts’ 107 largest colleges and universities will require their students to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to campuses this fall. A smaller number at least 23, as of late July will require on-campus faculty and staff to be vaccinated as well.

Many of the published policies ask students to get and report their immunizations well before the start of the semester, some as early as July 1, as seen in the table below.

The trend indicates a level of concern among school leaders that this academic year with refilled campuses and a sense of relief could still play host to the kind of outbreaks that proved relatively rare in the last one.

In May, a state working group comprised of school leaders and physicians recommended that colleges aim for “as close to 100% vaccination rates as possible” before reopening this fall .

The group led by Paula Johnson, president of Wellesley College, and a cardiologist wrote, “Each institution will need to decide the best way to maximize vaccination percentages on their own campuses.” But they did draw on past studies of influenza vaccines, showing that only mandates tended to get health care workers to immunization rates of 90% or higher.

“What you’re seeing is schools following the data,” said Rob McCarron, who served on the working group.

What Do Students Think

Many colleges and universities are on board with requiring students to take the COVID-19 vaccines. But do students agree with that?

According to a recent survey of 1,000 college students by College Pulse, 7 in 10 students believe colleges have the right to require students to get vaccinated before coming to campus.

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What Will This Mean For The Spring Semester

The hope is that schools will be able to prevent a massive spread of COVID infections on campus. While the past fall semester looked a little bit more like Fall 2019 and less like Fall 2020, the Omicron variant now poses a renewed threat. Again, safety precautions will still be in place, but the vaccine allows students to return to their campus with less fear and more excitement about classes, activities, and all of the things that make college…well, college.

“For us, it will mean we’ll have at least 80% of our classes face to face, it means that we will be back to the exciting and wonderful things that make campus life so wonderful and that includes, not just lectures and labs, but performances and athletics,” said Ora Hirsch Pescovitz, President of Oakland University, before the start of the Fall 2021 semester.

According to a survey conducted in March 2021 by Arts-Bridge, 62% of high schools students and parents are concerned they won’t have the “ideal college experience” because of the effects of the pandemic. Plus, 64% of high school juniors and seniors feel the price of college isn’t worth it when you’re learning from behind a screen instead of in a classroom.

The hope is that a vaccinated campus will help to solve these problems, to allow for that “ideal college experience” and for students to fully be back in the classroom.

Follow Carolyn on .

Menacwy Vaccine Mandates For Colleges And Universities

State

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Children In Licensed Daycare Centres

If you want your child to attend daycare, and decide not to vaccinate them due to medical, religious or philosophical reasons, you will need to give your daycare a valid written exemption. If the disease appears in your childs daycare centre, your child may have to stay out of daycare until the disease is no longer present.

Do College Students Support Requiring Covid

Cormac Thorpe, an incoming first-year student at Yale University who took a gap year in 2020, favors requiring vaccines because public schools already mandate immunization for other diseases.

“Colleges requiring a COVID vaccine would show they’re as serious about getting back to more normal college life as they’ve claimed to be,” Thorpe said in an email. “They’ve already taken large safety measures to combat the spread of the virus throughout the past year, and with vaccines being incredibly safe and well-tested, it is the obvious measure to ensure everyone’s safety.”

Tyler Newman, an incoming first-year student at Stanford University, also supports requiring the vaccine.

“The influx of students traveling from many different regions to attend school poses a safety hazard if precautions aren’t taken,” Newman wrote in an email. “Having all students fully vaccinated helps to keep university staff, faculty, students, and residents of the towns and cities in which the university resides safe.”

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‘bad Public Health And Bad Public Policy’

The challenge some schools face in vaccination efforts starts at the top: their states governor.

As Republican governors waged wars on vaccine passports documentation of a Covid-19 vaccination that is required to enter certain spaces colleges found themselves in the crosshairs. The so-called passports are usually discussed in the context of travel or access to large gatherings, but in states like Wyoming and Florida, officials told colleges that a Covid-19 vaccination requirement fell under the vaccine passport umbrella.

Two days later, Nova Southeastern was forced to reverse the requirement, which had become illegal.

I am frustrated with the state, said Charles Zelden, a professor of history and politics at Nova Southeastern. They are getting in the way of my classroom, my purpose to educate my students.

We are having people self-report on a voluntary basis if they have been vaccinated, and once we hit herd immunity on campus, or 80 percent vaccinated, then we will be able to open campus more so, but still not completely, Zelden said.

Not everyone objects to the change. Aliyah Gomez, 19, a rising sophomore, is happy vaccination is no longer required.

I was taken aback when I originally read the school was going to require the vaccine, Gomez said. It feels a bit pushy and Im not the only one who thought this was rushed. Gomez plans to eventually get vaccinated but wants to wait a little while.

Childhood Vaccines Every Parent Should Know About

• Meningococcal

School vaccine policies can change from time to time, especially when a new vaccine makes a debut. This happened when the chickenpox booster shot was introduced in 2006 and when new vaccines for DTaP and meningococcal meningitis were approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in 2020.

The approval of a vaccine by the FDA doesn’t mean that it will automatically be added to the list of vaccines required for school . In many cases, it will, but it doesn’t hurt to check just to be sure.

If a vaccine is recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices a group of experts within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention it is automatically included as an Essential Health Benefit under the Affordable Care Act and covered by most insurance.

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Vaccines And College Students: What Parents Need To Know

Recently, officials at Temple University reported to parents and staff that the campus had an outbreak of the highly contagious virus known as the mumps. Mumps is a viral infection that primarily affects saliva-producing glands that are located near your ears. Symptoms include swollen salivary glands, a puffy cheek appearance and cold symptoms such as headache, fatigue and fever.

A long line at where theyre lined up to get #mumps vaccine over 600 in the first 2 hours working to contain the outbreak. . Well be here all day reporting live #CBS3

Stephanie Stahl

Though there is no cure for mumps , mumps can be prevented by receiving the measles-mumps-rubella vaccination course as designated by the CDC.

According to Temples website, officials reported that there were 15 confirmed cases and 59 suspected cases bringing the total of infected individuals to 74, which constituted an outbreak by public health standards. Naturally, concerned parents flooded Temples Facebook page with questions regarding the health of their teens.

Outbreaks of preventable diseases are on the rise and, as our teens head to college, concerns about their health while living in dorms are at the forefront of our minds. Highly contagious diseases like mumps and influenza can spread rapidly through close quarter dorms and it is stressful when your college kid calls home to tell you they are feeling miserable.

What The Courts Say About Mandatory Vaccines

The U.S. Supreme Court has supported states authority to make these decisions for over a century.

In May 1901, a smallpox epidemic began in Boston. Now-familiar disease prevention measures were put into place: Sick patients were quarantined for treatment, and the city began a free, voluntary vaccination program. By December of that same year, the city had not contained the epidemic, so a local health commission required all adult residents to be vaccinated under the authority granted by the state.

The local government fined those who refused to be vaccinated, and one man disputed this fine by suing the state of Massachusetts. In 1905, the Supreme Court heard his case and held that a state can require vaccination in the interest of public health.

Today, some health law experts think vaccination requirements are important enough that they can still trump claims including individual religious liberty, while others are more skeptical.

The COVID-19 vaccines have one key difference they have only emergency use authorization at this point, not full FDA approval. The FDAs emergency use statute says people receiving the drug must be informed of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product but also of the consequences, if any, of refusing. How a lack of full approval would affect state decisions about school vaccine mandates and how the courts might view those decisions remains to be seen.

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