A regional public health department in Idaho is no longer providing COVID-19 vaccinations to residents in six counties after a narrow decision by its board.

Southwest District Health appears to be the first in the nation to be restricted from giving COVID-19 shots. Vaccinations are an essential function of a public health department.

While policymakers in Texas banned health departments from promoting COVID-19 vaccines and Florida’s surgeon general bucked medical consensus to recommend against the vaccine, governmental bodies across the country haven’t blocked the vaccines outright.

“I’m not aware of anything else like this,” said Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials. She said health departments have stopped offering the vaccine because of cost or low demand, but not based on “a judgment of the medical product itself.”

The six-county district along the Idaho-Oregon border includes three counties in the Boise metropolitan area. Demand for COVID-19 vaccines in the health district has declined — with 1,601 given in 2021 to 64 so far in 2024. The same is true for other vaccines: Idaho has the highest childhood vaccination exemption rate in the nation, and last year, the Southwest District Health Department rushed to contain a rare measles outbreak that sickened 10.

On Oct. 22, the health department’s board voted 4-3 in favor of the ban — despite Southwest’s medical director testifying to the vaccine’s necessity.

“Our request of the board is that we would be able to carry and offer those [vaccines], recognizing that we always have these discussions of risks and benefits,” Dr. Perry Jansen said at the meeting. “This is not a blind, everybody-gets-a-shot approach. This is a thoughtful approach.”

Opposite Jansen’s plea were more than 290 public comments, many of which called for an end to vaccine mandates or taxpayer funding of the vaccines, neither of which are happening in the district. At the meeting, many people who spoke are nationally known for making the rounds to testify against COVID-19 vaccines, including Dr. Peter McCullough, a Texas cardiologist who sells “contagion emergency kits” that include ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine — drugs that have not been approved to treat COVID-19 and can have dangerous side effects.

Board Chairman Kelly Aberasturi was familiar with many of the voices who wanted the ban, especially from earlier local protests of pandemic measures.

Aberasturi, who told The Associated Press that he’s skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines and national public health leaders, said in the meeting and in an interview with the AP that he was supportive of but “disappointed” in the board’s decision.

He said the board had overstepped the relationship between patients and their doctors — and possibly opened a door to blocking other vaccines or treatments.

Board members in favor of the decision argued people can get vaccinated elsewhere, and that providing the shots was equivalent to signing off on their safety. (Some people may be reluctant to get vaccinated or boosted because of misinformation about the shots despite evidence that they’re safe and have saved millions of lives.)

The people getting vaccinated at the health department — including people without housing, people who are homebound and those in long-term care facilities or in the immigration process — had no other options, Jansen and Aberasturi said.

“I’ve been homeless in my lifetime, so I understand how difficult it can be when you’re … trying to get by and get ahead,” Aberasturi said. “This is where we should be stepping in and helping.

“But we have some board members who have never been there, so they don’t understand what it’s like.”

State health officials have said that they “recommend that people consider the COVID-19 vaccine.” Idaho health department spokesperson AJ McWhorter declined to comment on “public health district business,” but noted that COVID-19 vaccines are still available at community health centers for people who are uninsured.

Aberasturi said he plans to ask at the next board meeting if the health department can at least be allowed to vaccinate older patients and residents of long-term care facilities, adding that the board is supposed to be caring for the “health and well-being” of the district’s residents. “But I believe the way we went about this thing is we didn’t do that due diligence.”
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geneva — More than 50,000 people have so far been vaccinated against mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, the World Health Organization’s chief said on Friday.

The outbreak is still not under control, the African Union’s health watchdog warned a day earlier, appealing for resources to avoid a “more severe” pandemic than Covid-19.

More than 1,100 people have died of mpox in Africa, where some 48,000 cases have been recorded since January, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

The majority of deaths have been in the DRC, the epicenter of the outbreak, which launched a vaccination drive last month.

“So far, more than 50,000 people have been vaccinated against mpox in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda, thanks to donations from the United States and the European Commission,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters.

He also said that nearly 900,000 vaccine doses had this week been allocated to nine countries under a mechanism set up by the WHO and its partners.

The countries in question were to be informed on Friday, he added.

“This is the first allocation of almost six million vaccine doses that we expect to be available by the end of 2024” through the Access and Allocation Mechanism (AAM), the WHO chief said.

Mpox, previously known as monkeypox, is caused by a virus transmitted to humans by infected animals that can also be passed from human to human through close physical contact.

Related to smallpox, the viral disease causes fever, body aches, swollen lymph nodes and a rash that forms into blisters.
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NEW DELHI — A thick layer of toxic smog cloaked India’s capital on Friday as smoke from firecrackers used to celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, pushed air pollution to hazardous levels.

New Delhi’s air quality index plunged into the “severe” category, according to SAFAR, India’s main environmental monitoring agency. In many areas, levels of deadly particulate matter reached seven times the World Health Organization’s safety limit.

Authorities in the capital have banned the use and sale of traditional firecrackers since 2017, asking people to opt for environmentally friendly ones or light shows instead, but the rule is often flouted.

New Delhi, home to more than 33 million people, is regularly ranked one of the most polluted cities in the world.

The air pollution crisis deepens particularly in the winter when the burning of crop residue in neighboring states coincides with cooler temperatures that trap deadly smoke. That smoke travels to New Delhi, leading to a surge in pollution and worsening the public health crisis.

Emissions from industries without pollution controls and the use of coal, which produces most of the country’s electricity, are also linked to poor air quality in urban areas.

“We may not realize it now, but later we will face lung problems,” said Manoj Kumar, a New Delhi resident who does his morning runs around the capital’s iconic India Gate monument.

Several studies have estimated that more than a million Indians die each year from air pollution-related diseases. Tiny particulate matter in polluted air can lodge deep in the lungs and cause a variety of major health problems.
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Bird flu has infected three more people from Washington state after they were exposed to poultry that tested positive for the virus, according to health authorities in Washington and in Oregon, where the human cases were identified. 

A total of 39 people have tested positive for bird flu in the U.S. this year, including nine from Washington, as the virus has infected poultry flocks and spread to more than 400 dairy herds, federal data show. All of the cases were farm workers who had known contact with infected animals, except for one person in Missouri. 

The people from Washington cleaned facilities at an infected chicken farm after birds were culled to contain the virus, the Washington State Department of Health said in an email on Thursday. 

Officials tested workers who had symptoms, including red eyes and respiratory issues, and those with potential exposure to the birds, the department said. People with symptoms were told to isolate and given antiviral treatment, it added. 

Oregon identified the three new cases after the people traveled to the state from Washington while infected, the Oregon Health Authority said in a Thursday statement. They have since returned to Washington, where public health staff are monitoring them, according to the statement. 

There have been no infections among people living in Oregon and there is no evidence of human-to-human transmission, the Oregon Health Authority said. It said the risk for infection to the general public remains low. 

Since 2022, the virus has wiped out more than 100 million poultry birds in the nation’s worst-ever bird flu outbreak. 

H5N1 bird flu was confirmed in a pig on a backyard farm in Oregon, the first detection of the virus in swine in the country, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said on Wednesday. 
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