This post was originally published on this site
President Trump ordered on Friday that federal funding be withheld from schools and universities that require students to be vaccinated against Covid, White House officials said, another step in the administration’s campaign against coronavirus vaccine requirements.
It was not clear how widely impactful the order would be. No states require K-12 students to be vaccinated against Covid. Only 15 colleges still required Covid vaccines for students as of late last year, according to No College Mandates, an advocacy group.
Riding the same wave of anti-vaccine sentiment, 21 states had already moved to outlaw student Covid vaccine mandates, the National Academy for State Health Policy, a nonpartisan research group, has said. And Republican elected officials across the country have pursued a tide of anti-vaccine measures, including a proposed ban in Montana on administering mRNA vaccines, which include some Covid shots, and a ban on a local health department in Idaho offering any Covid vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has said that monitoring has shown that Covid vaccines are safe for children.
Younger people are much less likely to be severely sickened by the coronavirus, but doctors have said that the virus has still harmed many children.
For Mr. Trump, whose first administration accelerated the development and rollout of Covid shots, saving some 140,000 lives in their early months of availability, the latest executive order was a turn toward reining in efforts to promote the vaccines.