PORT TOWNSEND — With continued elevated rates of COVID-19 transmission in Clallam and Jefferson counties, vaccine accessibility has increased for some and remained uncertain for others.
Dr. Allison Berry, the public health officer for the two counties, provided an update for the Board of Jefferson County Commissioners on Monday.
“There’s a little bit of good news and a little bit of bad news when it comes to the COVID-19 vaccine,” Berry said. “There’s good news in Washington state in that our state health officer has written a standing order, which is basically a prescription for the vaccine for everybody in the state.”
Access to vaccines was questionable when Berry updated the board of commissioners early in September. How or if populations under the age of 65 would access the vaccines was questionable, she said.
The standing order makes anyone who hase been in the state for longer than six months eligible for the vaccine, which is widely available and can be found at pharmacies and clinics, she said.
“The challenge is that our federal partners, at (the United States Department of Health and Human Services), have decided to hold on to the pediatric vaccine and have not distributed it across the country,” Berry said.
Washington state maintains a program called the Childhood Vaccine Program, which pays for the free vaccines of all children, Berry said.
Berry expressed concern that Women, Infants and Children (WIC) funding could be at risk.
“We have funding for about two more weeks of that program,” she said. “If the government shutdown extends past two weeks, we could actually see an inability to distribute funds for food to pregnant people and their babies in our community and really all across the country.”
Generally during a shutdown, local governments are able to move funds around with the guarantee that the money would be reimbursed at a later date, Berry said. No such guarantee has been given this year, she added.
Berry stressed that WIC recipients can still use their benefits while they last.
Berry addressed a recent announcement from President Donald Trump and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claiming a causal connection between the use of Acetaminophen or Tylenol during pregnancy and autism in children.
“I think it’s important for pregnant people, important for members of our community, important for folks who have a child with developmental disabilities, to understand that the medical literature does not support that conclusion,” Berry said.
While some studies in previous decades did find an association between high use of Tylenol during pregnancy and autism, no causation was found between the two, Berry said.
The distinction between association and causation is an important one, Berry said.
“My favorite example to differentiate those two is shark bites,” Berry said. “Shark bites massively escalate in the summer. The other thing that massively escalates in the summer is ice cream consumption. Ice cream consumption and getting bitten by sharks are associated. If you aren’t careful about causation, you could say that eating ice cream makes you more likely to get attacked by a shark. We know that that’s not true. They just both happen in the summer. The same thing is true for much of this research on autism.”
Autism is primarily a genetic disorder, she added.
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Reporter Elijah Sussman can be reached by email at elijah.sussman@peninsuladailynews.com.
