COVID-19 vaccines remain accessible without a prescription in North Carolina for adults with a qualifying high-risk condition or who are age 65 and older after Governor Josh Stein issued standing public health orders on Sept. 12.
Individuals who meet the Center for Disease Control’s criteria can now visit their nearest pharmacy for vaccination. Apart from age, the list of high-risk conditions includes chronic diseases, disabilities, weakened immune systems, mental health conditions and high BMI, among others.
The N.C. Department of Health and Human Services lists relevant resources on its website, including information on low-cost or free vaccines for those without health insurance.
In a press release, Gov. Stein’s office urged North Carolinians to get vaccinated ahead of this winter’s contagious disease season, noting that “COVID-like illness” caused 21,600 hospitalizations in the state last year.
Conflicting recommendations forecast continued confusion
The future availability of COVID-19 vaccines and other inoculations in the United States is uncertain. In September, a CDC panel under the guidance of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advised that Americans consult a medical provider before getting vaccinated. The Food and Drug Administration also recently revised its recommendations, limiting access to COVID-19 vaccines for most healthy people.
Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, federal public health guidelines have increasingly strayed from scientific consensus. In August, the American Academy of Pediatrics released a different vaccine schedule for children than that of the CDC for the first time in 30 years. The states of California, Oregon and Washington also recently formed a “West Coast Health Alliance” to issue unified vaccine recommendations for respiratory viruses in opposition to the CDC.
WFU professor weighs in
Dr. Megan Bennett, an assistant professor of Health and Exercise Science at Wake Forest who studies epidemiology and public health, praised Gov. Stein’s action to preserve vaccine access in North Carolina but said she remained “deeply concerned” by the new federal guidelines.
“State-level interventions cannot fully address the broader implications of this policy shift,” Bennett said in a statement. “The FDA has introduced unnecessary confusion into what should be a straightforward public health intervention.”
Bennett warned that even otherwise healthy individuals can experience serious illness from COVID-19 or spread the disease to more susceptible groups.
“Restricting access to these life-saving interventions represents a tragic backwards step in our pandemic response, one that prioritizes short-term political expediency over long-term public health outcomes and threatens to exacerbate existing health disparities in our most vulnerable communities,” Bennett said.
