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Advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday unanimously voted to add COVID-19 vaccines to the 2023 schedule of childhood and adult immunizations. (Moreno and Dreher, 10/20)

The vote came a day after ACIP approved adding COVID vaccines to the Vaccines for Children (VFC) program, which provides free vaccines to children who don't have health insurance or who can't afford them. (10/20)

The expert panel’s decisions are almost always adopted by the CDC director and then sent to doctors as part of the government’s advice on how to prevent disease. State and local officials often look to the lists in making decisions about vaccination requirements for school attendance, but local officials don’t always adopt every recommendation. Flu and HPV shots, for example, aren’t required by many schools. (Stobbe, 10/20)

“This doesn’t represent new recommendations. This represents sort of a summary of existing recommendations,” said advisory panel member Matthew Daley, a senior investigator at the Institute for Health Research at Kaiser Permanente Colorado. “But I will acknowledge ... there is symbolism in adding Covid-19 to the childhood immunization schedule, and that symbolism is that we view this as routine and that we view this as Covid is here to stay.” (Gardner, 10/20)

"We will make sure that your freedom to make those decisions on behalf of your kids remains intact in the state of Florida, regardless of what the CDC does,” DeSantis said during a press conference in Fort Myers. “There are probably many, many more, who've watched how the CDC has performed since Covid and understand there's a lot of political ideology that has seeped into this.” (Sarkissian, 10/20)

“A scary # of kids are dying after taking the Covid vax — from myocarditis among other injuries,” Kelly wrote in her post on Wednesday afternoon. “HOW DARE THE CDC ADD THIS TO ITS LIST OF SCHOOL VACCINATIONS? Don’t listen. Be v careful w/ your teenage boys in partic but girls too. These are not honest brokers. This is dangerous!” (Mastrangelo, 10/20)

Dr. Katelyn Jetelina, the founder and author of the Your Local Epidemiologist newsletter, says it is “90% likely” that the U.S. will see a winter COVID-19 wave. (Vaziri, 10/20)

The U.S. may not be far behind. America’s COVID numbers are falling when aggregated across the country, but this isn’t true in every region. The decline is largely driven by trends in California, says Samuel Scarpino, the vice president of pathogen surveillance at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Pandemic Prevention Initiative. In chillier New England, hospitalization numbers have already ticked up by as much as nearly 30 percent, and more virus is showing up in wastewater, too. (Zhang, 10/20)

“We just don’t have as many critical care beds [for children] as we have adult critical care beds simply because we don’t usually need them,” said Dr. Juan Salazar, physician in chief of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center. Cases began spiking in early September and rose exponentially, he said, which is something he’s never seen before. (Masciadrelli and Martichoux, 10/20)