Ivy League schools are still refusing to personally teach students who are unaware of their Covid vaccines — in a move that has been labeled “pointless” and “non-scientific.”
Harvard, Yale, Columbia and Pennsylvania have the strictest mandates making having the new bivalent booster a condition of entry.
This means that Harvard students who have already received four injections must receive a fifth to continue their studies.
The rest of the Ivy League universities are requiring at least two Covid shots, with some requiring a booster as well.
Multiple experts told DailyMail.com that the mandate is “nonsensical” at this point.
Half of Ivy League universities require students to have the bivalent Covid shot to continue their studies
Students who do not adhere to this will not be allowed to attend physical classes
It comes as the US continues to mandate the Covid vaccine for foreigners arriving from other countries. It is the only country in the world that still does.
There is little evidence that mandates ever stopped transmission, although the injections are highly effective at preventing serious illness and death.
Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center and professor of pediatrics in the infectious disease division at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told DailyMail.com that the policy “is wrong.”
He said: ‘The people who benefit from boosters, as shown by studies conducted by the CDC and in the UK, fall into four groups: people who are older, those with multiple co-morbidities and those with weakened immune systems, and women who be pregnant.
“But healthy young people, like most people at Harvard [and other universities], don’t fall into those groups. What a vaccine will provide is transient immunity against mild disease, and I just don’t see that as a viable public health strategy.”
Harvard University requires all on-campus students to have a primary set of Covid injections plus the bivalent booster. The staff is not required to get the booster
Yale University similarly requires students to have the bivalent injection
He added that most hospitals don’t even need a bivalent booster, despite the fact that “hospitals care for vulnerable patients, many of whom cannot be successfully vaccinated.”
Bob Moffit, senior research fellow at the center for health and welfare policy studies at the right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation, told DailyMail.com “there is no scientific justification for Harvard or any other university to force healthy young men and women to receive a Covid vaccine.” to get’.
He said: ‘The data is overwhelming: young and healthy individuals are at extremely low risk of serious illness, hospitalization and death from Covid-19.
“The vaccine actually carries a small risk, especially for young men, of myocarditis.
“Anytime there is a personal risk from a medical procedure, including a vaccine, the ethical imperative is a personal choice, not an institutional compulsion.”
Columbia University requires all staff and students to have their primary series plus all boosters when they qualify
Dr. Monica Gandhi, medical director of the HIV clinic at San Francisco General Hospital, Ward 86, told DailyMail.com that she “didn’t see any evidence to make the bivalent booster mandatory for students at universities like Harvard, as it’s generally young people are’, and said, ‘the school[s] can no longer mandate the bivalent vaccine for transmission prevention.’
She added: “There’s a lot of population-level immunity in the US right now and vaccine mandates don’t make sense at this stage of the pandemic.”
Private companies and locations in the US can still enforce vaccine mandates, such as hospitals, as can state employees in some areas.
The demands of Ivy League universities stand even if students have had Covid, despite studies suggesting natural immunity provides significant protection.
Dr. Anna Durbin, director of the Center for Immunization Research at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told DailyMail.com: ‘We know that the vaccines may not reduce transmission for more than a few months and that severe Covid is rarely seen in younger people. individuals.
“It is unclear what effect the booster dose will have in this population in terms of disease reduction.”
Made by Moderna and Pfizer, the bivalent (or updated) booster dose became available in the US from September last year.
The updated vaccines were advertised as being able to boost protection against Omicron subvariants that have become world-dominant.
But a report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released in January suggested that most Americans who get their bivalent booster vaccine are not protected from getting sick with Covid.
It found that the updated injections were only 48 percent effective in stopping symptomatic infection caused by the XBB.1.5 subvariant, the currently dominant variant, for up to three months.
The CDC emphasized that the main purpose of the vaccines is to prevent hospitalization and death rather than transmission, and they are still expected to provide high levels of protection against serious disease.
But the findings mean the bivalent injections – for which the US government paid $5 billion last fall – do not meet the The World Health Organization’s 50 percent efficacy threshold for an effective vaccine.
According to CDC dataonly 16 percent of the US population has received the updated Covid booster shot to date.
Harvard’s Vaccine Requirement Policy, updated February 2023, states, “Harvard requires the new bivalent Covid-19 booster for all eligible students attending on campus.”
Students must prove they are aware of all Harvard vaccination requirements through the Harvard Patient Portal before they can enroll in classes.
Exceptions are only made for medical or religious reasons, the university said.
Meanwhile, Harvard “highly recommends” that its employees with an on-campus presence get the booster, and current staff no longer have to prove their vaccination status.
New employees must prove they have had their primary series of Covid shots.
Similarly, Yale only requires its students and not teachers to receive the bivalent injection.
Columbia University’s mandates are more universal, requiring all staff and students to have their primary series plus all boosters when they are eligible.
If students aren’t bullied and can’t give an exemption, they won’t be able to attend face-to-face classes or even study at university at all.
Early last year, the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention warned that young men who received the mRNA vaccines — either the Pfizer or Moderna shot — were at increased risk for heart inflammation.
The agency warned that myocarditis was more common in men ages 16 and older within seven days of receiving the shot.
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