NEW YORK (WABC) — There’s a new front in the battle over COVID vaccines.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced on Thursday that she will sign an executive order explicitly allowing pharmacists to prescribe and administer the shot after CVS and others said they would require a doctor’s prescription.
“This temporary order will ensure seamless access while the Governor works with the Legislature on a long-term solution to safeguard access to preventive care and vaccines,” a spokesperson for the governor said in a statement. “By signing this EO, Governor Hochul is making it clear that when Washington Republicans play politics with public health, New Yorkers will still be able make their own health care decisions and get the care they need from trusted providers in their community.”
The announcement is a reprieve for New Yorkers, but it has also now sparked confusion.
The confusion follows a surprise decision by the Food and Drug Administration, authorizing the latest vaccine only for older Americans, or those with underlying conditions.
The healthcare chaos was on full display Thursday at the U.S. Capitol, where Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a noted vaccine skeptic, faced a withering inquiry from the Senate Finance Committee.
Even some Republicans, who voted recently to confirm his appointment by President Donald Trump, are now angry at Kennedy’s ouster of his own CDC director, Dr. Susan Monarez, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal, she had been fired for refusing Kennedy’s “troubling directive” that she rubber stamp the as yet unwritten recommendations of a panel, she claimed, “filled with people who have publicly expressed anti-vaccine rhetoric.”
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