Please refer to the following Pennsylvania Department of Health LINK for entry into kindergarten or first year of public school in Pennsylvania.
New Pennsylvania Immunization Requirements
An announcement has been made regarding a major change for Pennsylvania students and parents when it comes to immunizations.
The state's secretaries of health and education have announced plans to revise immunization regulations for school children. Currently, students must be immunized to attend school, but it includes a provisional period.
Past requirements for students required them to have the first dose of a vaccine to attend school, allowing up to 8 months to complete a multi-dose vaccine.
Students entering school in kindergarten or their first year in school will now be required to have 4 doses of polio vaccine ( a change from 3). The 4th dose must be on or after the child's 4th birthday. If a student who is already in school only has 3 doses and the 3rd dose is after the child's 4th birthday, that is acceptable by the state.
The new regulation would require students to receive the final dose within the first 5 school days. Or, if the medical schedule doesn't allow it, a medical certificate that includes a plan to complete the vaccine.
The proposal also changes some of the states vaccination requirements, including requiring a pertussis and meningococcal vaccine for students entering 12th grade.
Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Karen Murphy says the current 8-month provisional window for immunization presents a very real risk for children to become infected and potentially spread preventable, communicable diseases to others.
The regulations apply to public, private, parochial and non-public schools.
The school code does allow for an immunization exemption for religious, philosophical and medical reasons.
(medical exemption requires documentation from a health care practitioner)
Universal Flu Vaccination
Despite recommendations for universal vaccination of all individuals older than 6 months, influenza vaccine uptake in the United States remains dismal. Although there are clear benefits of large-scale vaccination in terms of both use of healthcare resources and improved work productivity, the issue of whether the influenza vaccine may prevent cardiovascular (CV) events has been controversial.
However, a new meta-analysis finds that the influenza vaccine may reduce the risk for CV events by more than one third among adults, and even more among adults at high risk for CV disease (CVD). These findings could have important implications for public health policy, as well as the way in which physicians counsel individual patients regarding the use of the influenza vaccine.