A bill to amend West Virginia’s law requiring vaccinations in schools will be brought to the full Senate for a vote.
The Senate Committee on Health and Human Resources amended Bill 5105which eliminated a provision that would have allowed public school students to submit a letter stating that their child cannot be vaccinated for religious reasons and then be granted an exemption.
As amended, the bill would allow religious and denominational schools to develop their own policies on vaccinations and provide them with legal protections for those decisions, said Health Committee Vice Chairman Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha. It also provides vaccination exemptions for students attending virtual public schools.
Students participating in activities outside of their school sponsored by the West Virginia Secondary School Activities Commission will still be required to get vaccinated. The amended bill also clarifies that a student attending both virtual and in-person classes must meet the in-person class requirements.
Takubo said that what is referred to in the version of the bill as religious exemptions The House of Representatives passed are actually philosophical exceptions. He said last year’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act allows people to refuse vaccinations on the grounds that their religious freedom is being violated.
“I am a strong advocate of vaccination,” said doctor Takubo about the reasons for removing religious exemptions from the law. “I am in favor of maintaining effective vaccines.”
According to the CDC, there were 41 cases of measles – a highly contagious, potentially fatal disease – in 16 states, including Maryland, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, as of delayed last month. The last reported case of measles in West Virginia was in 2009, authorities said.
“I think a lot of people have never experienced anything like this in their lives, and so it’s easy to forget how serious and contagious these diseases are until it’s too late,” Takubo said. “And my fear is that we’re going to continue to loosen these laws, and then when it happens, it’s going to be a shock moment where you think, ‘Oh man, what have we really done?’ And what I’ve said to my colleagues is that it might not happen next year or 10 years from now, but I don’t want them to turn on the TV at some point and see that there was an outbreak of measles or some other preventable disease across West Virginia and several children died, and that they were responsible for allowing that to happen.”
Takubo voted against the bill and said he plans to vote against it in the Senate as well but expects it to pass.
Four experts testified at the Senate Health Committee meeting, including Dr. Lisa Costello, a pediatrician at WVU Medicine Children’s Hospital in Morgantown.
Costello said the bill caused her “great concern.”
“West Virginia is considered a national leader when it comes to routine childhood vaccinations,” Costello said. “We lead the nation in our vaccination rates, and any public policy that could potentially lower those rates opens the door to vaccine-preventable diseases, which we have fortunately not seen many cases of in West Virginia…”
“I applaud the fact that over the last 20 years, under Democratic and Republican leadership, lawmakers have prioritized the health and safety of our children and maintained our strong vaccination policies,” she said. “By allowing all schools, including private schools, to potentially exempt this vaccination requirement, we are opening the door for these vaccine-preventable diseases to re-enter our communities.”
The committee also heard from Dr. Alvin Moss, a professor of medicine at West Virginia University and director of the West Virginia Center for Health Ethics and Law, who said he disagreed with Costello on vaccinations. Moss said the state’s vaccination requirement was coercion and contradicted informed consent.
“So coercion actually destroys genuine, informed consent, and mandatory regulation goes against the whole idea of meaningful consent,” he said.
