Schools Should Mandate COVID-19 Vaccines for Kids
Coronavirus,Coronavirus Vaccine,Vaccine Mandates,Children,Schools,Public Health,Safety And Sanity During COVID-19,CDC,Moderna,Pfizer
Schools are back in session. Kids are back in classrooms. And the highly contagious delta variant is along for the ride, causing COVID-19 cases among children to rise.
On Sept. 9, the Los Angeles board of education voted to mandate coronavirus vaccines for in-person students ages 12 and up in America's second-largest school district. The move has been met with praise and criticism.
As part of Two Takes, a series examining opinions about key issues, U.S. News checked in with Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, for his reaction.
Responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Should K-12 schools mandate the coronavirus vaccine for all eligible students?
Yes. Much as we mandate vaccines for a variety of illnesses like measles or chickenpox or whooping cough in order for kids to attend school.
The coronavirus vaccine works and is safe to prevent a pandemic virus that in the past few weeks has caused more than 450,000 American children to become ill, and millions of children to suffer and more than 450 to die since the outbreak began.
We need to protect our children. Vaccines will do that.
.png.webp)
