CHICAGO (WGN) — State health officials are now making their own recommendations about several vaccines, including the COVID-19 shot.
Dr. Ravi Jhaveri, head of Infectious Diseases at Lurie Children’s Hospital, said the new state recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine will make it simpler and easier to get.
“Patients are confused,” he said. “Patients are wanting to know how they can get the vaccine.”
The state recommendations come days after Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine advisers chose not to recommend the COVID-19 vaccine for anyone at the federal level, instead saying people could make individual decisions about whether to get it.
Dr. Sameer Vohra is the director of the Illinois Department of Public Health.
“The gold standard process of credibility-transparency, science-based recommendations were not being met, so Illinois went through its own process,” Vohra said.
Vohra tells WGN News that he accepted the recommendations voted on and discussed by the Illinois Immunization Advisory Committee, a group of 20 experts spanning various medical specialties, which met on Monday.
The IDPH is recommending the COVID vaccine for:
- All children 6 months through 23 months and all adults 18 and older
- Children ages 2 through 17 years of age who have at least one underlying risk factor or whose parents/guardians want them to get the vaccine
- All pregnant people and those who are planning pregnancy, those who are postpartum, or during lactation
Vohra also issued a standing order that will improve access to the vaccine in pharmacies and clinical settings.
The recommendations follow Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s executive order, signed in early September, which aimed to protect access to vaccines.
“Parents and families want to get the clarity,” Jhaveri said. “Many of them want to vaccinate their kids but have been struggling to figure out how they can get it.”
Dr. Jhaveri says the state recommendations will cut through the confusion he has encountered from both families and vaccine suppliers, and will help parents protect their children.
“I would push back against the narrative that’s been out there that COVID is not severe in children. Right now in the hospital, it’s not that we have kids that have severe COVID, but we have many children who had an initial COVID infection that have now had some complicating factor, a secondary bacterial infection of their eye socket and space, of their lung that needed drainage of pus. That’s still happening, it’s been happening for the last several years, and people aren’t talking about it enough.”
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