Covid vaccine banned for first time in Idaho counties

The decision by the regional board will likely give ammunition to vaccine-sceptics and anti-vaxxers who pushed against the rollout of jabs

Covid-19 vaccines have been banned for the first time by a US public health board over claims the risks now outweigh the benefits.
A health department in Idaho voted last week to stop administering Covid vaccines, becoming the first to do so across the US.
Idaho’s Southwest District health department board voted four-three to stop making the vaccines available to residents in six counties across the state. All Covid-19 vaccines have been either approved or authorised for emergency use across the US by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
The decision by the Idaho regional board will likely give ammunition to vaccine-sceptics and anti-vaxxers who pushed against the rollout of the vaccines in the US. It is likely that other public health boards could follow suit. Similar campaigns were run in Europe including the UK but received short shrift.
Texas has banned health departments from prompting Covid vaccines while Florida’s surgeon general has recommended vaccines are no longer used, but the Idaho regional health board has gone further by banning its widespread administration.
The health board ignored the advice of its own medical director who had given evidence on the ongoing need for the vaccine. Demand for the vaccines had dropped enormously since the peak of the virus in 2021. More than 1,600 doses were given out in 2021 but that had dropped to just 64 so far in 2024.
Vaccines are administered where the benefits outweigh the risks posed by side effects. It is widely recognised that worldwide, the rollout of Covid vaccines saved almost 20 million lives in their first year.
At the Idaho regional board meeting at the end of October, Dr Perry Jansen, the medical director, made a direct plea to the seven-person board not to ban the Covid vaccines.
He said: “Our request of the board is that we would be able to carry and offer those [vaccines], recognising that we always have these discussions of risks and benefits. This is not a blind, everybody-gets-a-shot approach. This is a thoughtful approach.”
But the board voted four to three for the ban. More than 290 people and organisations submitted comments opposing the continued rollout of the vaccine in the six counties.
Kelly Aberasturi, the board chairman, said that he was supportive of the board’s decision to ban the Covid-19 vaccines but also “disappointed” in it.
Those at the meeting, included Dr Peter McCullough, a Texas cardiologist who sells “contagion emergency kits” that include ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine — drugs that have “Covid-19-outside-hospital-setting” or have not been approved to treat Covid-19 and can have dangerous side effects.
Adriane Casalotti, chief of government and public affairs for the National Association of County and City Health Officials, said: “I’m not aware of anything else like this.”
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.
State health officials have said that they “recommend that people consider the Covid-19 vaccine”. Idaho health department spokesman AJ McWhorter declined to comment on “public health district business,” but noted that Covid-19 vaccines are still available at community health centres for people who are uninsured.
In the UK, the country’s own vaccine, developed by Oxford University and the pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca has been withdrawn from use worldwide. The vaccine is credited with saving about six million lives in the first year of the vaccine rollout. AstraZeneca has insisted the withdrawal was made for purely commercial reasons and that the vaccine is safe.
But AstraZeneca is being sued for tens of millions of pounds by grieving relatives and people made very seriously ill by the vaccine, caused by an extremely rare side effect that caused blood clots. AstraZeneca has denied liability in a case that will be keenly watched. The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine never received approval for use in the US.