President Donald Trump signed this Monday an executive order that makes childhood vaccination recommendations more flexible in the United States long-standing, calls for more research on the consequences on children’s health and orders separating the triple vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella so that they are distributed in separate medical visits.
According to the White House decree, it is now recommended to administer each vaccine at its own doctor’s visit and separate the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine (MMR, equivalent to Argentina’s Triple Viral vaccine) into three different doses. In the US, there are no separate vaccines against those three diseases.
It also calls on the Department of Health to improve vaccine research, according to the fact sheet. Spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said the order calls for “greater flexibility in vaccination and research.”
Public health experts have expressed concern that spacing out injections, as Trump suggests, may increase children’s risk of becoming infected with a vaccine-preventable disease before visiting the doctor again. Furthermore, complicates vaccination because they must be taken to the professional several times to be immunized and encourages the free choice of family members about whether to vaccinate their children, amid a strong rise in the anti-vaccine movement.
Trump has repeatedly expressed his suspicions that the number or timing of vaccines could influence the triggering of autism spectrum disorders, although the scientific consensus and Decades of studies have firmly concluded that there is no relationship.
Childhood vaccines — and how and when to give them in combination — go through rigorous studies, and safety monitoring continues for years as doses are used.
The news comes shortly before classes start and while the country deals with a measles outbreak that, according to experts, could cause the United States to lose its status as a country free of that disease.
“By signing this executive order, the president is helping Americans who are wondering, especially post-COVID, about vaccination requirements, and opens a dialogue to foster public trust”, a White House official told The Daily Caller site, which anticipated the news.
“On this particular issue there has been a lot of misinformation and misinformation in the media,” another White House official said. “There is nothing in the executive order that is not based on gold-standard data and science. We are taking an evidence-based approach, but much of the information is not evidence-based,” he added.