Welcome to Wellness on Mass. I'm Dr. Nicole Sapphire, and this is your weekly rundown.

Now, I was waiting until the very last minute to put this out because I wanted to see if the CDC's

ASIP was going to hold a vote on whether or not to be giving universal hepatotitis B vaccines to newborns.

And to be honest, they're just talking, talking, talking.

A lot of the members of this community love to hear themselves talk.

So I got to get this out to you.

I will update you on social media and next week what they end up voting on.

But here's what's happening.

This week, yesterday and today, ASIP, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices through the CDC,

have been meeting to reconsider the longstanding recommendation that all newborns receive a birth

dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. And I'll be honest, the meeting has been messy. Lots of tension.

Coming down to one question, do we need to universally vaccinate at birth, especially in mothers

who are testing negative? That's a really good question. So, mind you, this proposal is not about

infants born to mothers who are positive for hepatitis B or who are unknown. Those infants

would still absolutely receive the birth dose. They should. Now, the vote

under consideration is really just for babies whose mothers have a confirmed negative hepatitis B test.

For those infants, ASIP is weighing whether to eliminate the universal birth dose and instead allowed

the first shot to be given at two months of age.

Because they're not worried about the mother passing hepatitis B to the infant during

birth now, this dose at two months is just to protect them for the future because you can still

get hepatitis B. So here's the debate. The pro-vaccine position saying essentially there's decades of data

of clear benefit. If you look at hepatitis B infections in the United States, they have gone down

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