The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Oct. 6 that it no longer recommends universal COVID-19 vaccination. It also now advises children younger than four to receive the chickenpox vaccine separately from the combined measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccine, a move USC’s Chief Campus Health Officer Dr. Sarah Van Orman called “strange” in a briefing with campus media Oct. 7.

“We encourage everyone to receive an updated vaccine. It’s especially important if you are over age 65 or have any high health risk conditions, but it’s something that everyone can take advantage of, and it is available on campus,” said Van Orman.

Students, faculty and staff are still able to obtain the COVID-19 vaccine through any USC Pharmacy, as Student Health opted last month to align itself with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s less restrictive vaccination guidance.

The CDC estimated that nearly 85% of U.S. adults received the initial COVID-19 vaccine series, but only 23% have gotten the most recent seasonal booster.

The CDC has a vaccine guidance panel called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. This panel debates, develops and votes on vaccine recommendations. Once a change is approved, it gets sent to the CDC’s director for formal adoption. The October changes to the CDC’s vaccine guidance were spurred by the ACIP’s approval of these changes in a Sep. 18 meeting.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. instated what he called “a clean sweep” June 9, firing all 17 ACIP members “to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science,” according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services press release. He has been incrementally reconstituting it with his appointees.

Families who choose to vaccinate their children can either opt for a combined vaccine that protects against measles, mumps, rubella and varicella, or take two separate vaccines — MMR and chickenpox.

Van Orman said the ACIP’s choice to weigh in on the administration of the MMRV and MMR vaccines was “unfortunate.”

“It always remained an option for people to give the vaccines separately versus together,” Van Orman said. “This is a very strange recommendation for policy to weigh into this very specific issue. I don’t think that [they have] a good understanding of the science behind it or even [an] understanding of what febrile seizures are.”

Supporters of separating the doses point toward the fact that children who receive the combined vaccine face double the risk of experiencing a febrile seizure — seizures caused by fever, typically in response to the contraction of a respiratory illness. Infants and young children are most at risk, and most episodes last less than two minutes, according to the CDC.

While febrile seizures do not cause permanent harm, they can be “very frightening” for families, Van Orman said. About 2% to 4% of children under five have experienced at least one febrile seizure, according to the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office.

“Those diseases themselves have really horrific risks associated with them, including morbidity,” Van Orman said. “The MMRV vaccine was really designed to reduce barriers to vaccination. Most individuals who are experts in this field feel like the risk of febrile seizure associated with MMRV is so [minimal compared to] giving the two vaccines separately — that’s why MMRV was approved.”

A separate 2012 Vaccine Safety Datalink study, which reviewed data from 2000 to 2008, found that the risk of febrile seizures seven to 10 days after the second dose of the MMRV vaccine for children aged four to six was about one in 86,750, compared to one in 182,820 for children receiving the MMR and varicella vaccines separately.

“The MMRV vaccine is safe, separating the vaccines is safe, both are very important,” Van Orman said. “People can choose what they want. I think it’s unfortunate that we’re taking people’s choice away to receive them as a combination vaccine based on what is a very, very negligible risk.”