CT Senate Leaders Vow To Continue State Hepatitis B Vaccine Policies After CDC Changes Recommendation

Connecticut Senate Democrats on Friday criticized a decision by an advisory committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to end a 34-year-old universal vaccination recommendation for hepatitis B and replace it with a recommendation to vaccinate newborns only if the mother tests positive or has not been tested for the virus.

In a joint statement, Democratic state Senate President Martin Looney of New Haven, Majority Leader Bob Duff of Norwalk, and state Sen. Saud Anwar of South Windsor — a medical doctor and Senate chair of the Public Health Committee — called the new guidelines “outlandish and disturbing” and said the act made future decisions from the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) all but impossible to trust.

“Since universal newborn vaccination against hepatitis B was first recommended in 1991, rates of infection among children and teens have plummeted,” Anwar said. “That’s evidence of lives saved, illness avoided, and the overwhelming success of this universal standard.”

The American Public Health Association estimates that the universal vaccine policy had prevented more than 500,000 infections and 90,000 deaths since it was implemented, Anwar said.

Looney said he was “deeply troubled” by the change and vowed to continue the state’s immunization policies.

Looney said US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and President Donald Trump “are turning the CDC into a platform for conspiracy theories and placing American lives at risk.”

Duff agreed, calling the change a departure from evidence-based medicine.

“The hepatitis B vaccine has reduced infections in children by 99 percent since the early 1990s, and there is no legitimate scientific reason to change course now,” he said. “Connecticut’s healthcare providers and families deserve clear, science-based guidance that prioritizes children’s health and safety. Connecticut will not follow Trump and Kennedy down this dangerous path of vaccine denial.”

Earlier this year, the advisory committee had its membership replaced by Kennedy, a former trial lawyer who has a record of promoting debunked anti-vaccine views.

Hepatitis B can cause lifelong chronic injury and complications that can lead to death among those infected as infants.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and former director of the CDC, decried the Trump administration’s decision.

“For decades, we have had a unity of voice where your local doctor probably or your local pharmacist will recommend a vaccine based on what they’re seeing from healthcare providers, what they are learning from healthcare providers, what they are learning from societies and other medical experts, and all that is trickling down,” Walensky said. “And for the most part, there has been a unity in that voice that has also been unified with the federal government. And right now, unfortunately, that voice is really unified in the medical societies and down to your local pediatrician and your local pharmacist. And those are the voices that I would continue to listen to.”

In a statement released Friday, US Rep. John Larson, D-1st District, said he had called for Kennedy to resign in September after he’d promoted an anti-vaccine “purge” during a Senate hearing. Friday, Larson said that “since he was sworn in, Kennedy has dismissed all 17 members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) that recommends vaccines, canceled $500 million in funding for vaccine research, and announced new restrictions on the COVID-19 vaccine.”

Larson also highlighted the state of Florida’s plan to end all childhood vaccine requirements based on Kennedy’s rhetoric.

“Once again, Secretary Kennedy is putting his anti-vaccine conspiracies above the health of our nation’s children,” Larson said. “This latest move by his panel of conspiracy theorists, yet again, has no basis in facts or evidence, and will only further imperil the progress we’ve made against preventable diseases — in this case, Hepatitis B. Vaccinations are backed by decades of extensive scientific research. If the CDC moves forward with this baseless recommendation, children will die. The longer RFK Jr. stays in his role as our nation’s top health official, the more harm he and his pseudoscientific conspiracies will cause.”