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‘Fat Possum:’ West Virginia Senate Health Committee revives vaccine exemption legislation

State Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion, raised objections Monday to amending HB 2776 to include another effort to allow for exemptions to school-age vaccines. (Photo courtesy of WV Legislative Photography)

CHARLESTON — A West Virginia Senate committee opened up a House of Delegates bill Monday and amended into it an updated version of the school-age vaccine exemption legislation rejected by the House last month, creating what one senator called a “fat possum.”

The Senate Health and Human Resources Committee recommended a strike-and-insert amendment to House Bill 2776 Monday afternoon, requiring the state Department of Health to report positive alpha-gal tests to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

HB 2776 was meant to add alpha-gal syndrome, a kind of food allergy caused by tick bites, to the list of diseases required to be reported to the CDC. But the committee amended it to include an updated version of a bill that died in the House on March 24 in a 42-56 vote — Senate Bill 460, relating to vaccine requirements.

SB 460 was the first bill passed by the Senate Health Committee the day after the start of the 2025 legislative session on Feb. 12. The bill, introduced on behalf of Gov. Patrick Morrisey and based on an executive order he signed, originally allowed for both religious and philosophical objections to school-age vaccines.

“There’s a saying, ‘fat possums run at midnight,’ and we’re getting to the midnight hour of this legislative session,” said state Sen. Joey Garcia, D-Marion. “This was the first thing we did, and apparently we’re going to try to make this the last thing that we do here.”

The Senate Health Committee’s amendment to HB 2776 would permit a physician, physician assistant or nurse practitioner to provide a written medical exemption to the state’s mandatory school-age immunization program to the administrator of the child’s school or state-regulated child care center. It would also create a religious exemption to school-age vaccines by permitting a parent, legal guardian or emancipated child to provide an annual notarized written statement to the school or child care center on a form created by the Department of Health. In order to receive that religious exemption, the parent/guardian and child would be required to review evidence-based educational materials provided by the department regarding immunizations.

Full-time students attending virtual public school students would be exempt from school-age vaccine requirements. The amendment would require data reporting by public, private and parochial schools, including the number and percentage of students with immunization exemptions. This reporting would be made available to parents/guardians with children enrolled at the school.

State Code requires children attending school to show proof of immunization for diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, varicella and hepatitis B unless proof of a medical exemption can be shown.

Garcia raised an objection to the amendment, arguing that the amendment was not germane to the bill and violates Article VI, Section 30, of the state constitution, which states that “no act hereafter passed shall embrace more than one object.” Garcia’s objection was overruled by Senate Health Committee Chairwoman Laura Wakim Chapman, R-Ohio.

“With all due respect to the chair of this committee, to come in here and re-look at a bill related to alpha-gal regulations, and to put this bill in is absolutely not germane, possibly a double object, and I don’t even know if it’s going to hold up in court,” Garcia said.

State Sen. Tom Takubo, R-Kanawha, is a doctor and pulmonologist in the Charleston area. He raised concerns about reducing the immunization numbers among children, which are already some of the lowest in the nation for pre-school-age children. Takubo said reducing the number of immunized children would lower herd immunity rates and make children more susceptible to diseases, such as measles.

“There’s so much in today’s world that these kids have to worry about. Dying and struggling from these completely preventable childhood diseases shouldn’t be one of them,” Takubo said. “This Legislature is dead set on putting our kids in harm’s way.

“If we do what this bill’s trying to do, we’re going to go from one of the best to one of the worst in just a matter of a few years,” he said. “We’re the worst vaccinated state in the country until it’s time to go to school, then we become one of the best. … When we go to one of the worst, and you see the stuff that’s happening throughout Texas and Oklahoma and New Mexico, it is coming here, and it’s going to come here in a bad way.”

Steven Allen Adams can be reached at sadams@newsandsentinel.com.

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