South Carolina’s top public health doctor warns senators wrong lessons being learned from COVID

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — South Carolina’s top doctor came before a small group of state senators on Thursday to tell them he thinks a bill overhauling how public health emergencies are handled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has some bad ideas, concerns echoed by Gov. Henry McMaster.

As drafted, the bill would prevent mandating vaccines unless they have been licensed by the Food and Drug Administration for 10 years. That means that health care providers would be blocked from requiring flu vaccines or other shots that get yearly updates for ever-changing viruses, said Dr. Edward Simmer, director of the state Department of Health and Environmental Control.

In addition to loosening restrictions on who can visit people in isolation, the measure would also require symptom-free patients to be released from quarantine well before some infectious diseases begin to show outward signs, Simmer said at a Thursday hearing.

“There are a number of issues that we believe where this bill would cause harm to the people of South Carolina and would in fact cause unnecessary death amongst people of South Carolina during a public health crisis because it would prevent us from taking actions that could save lives,” Simmer said.

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