By Steven Allen Adams for The Inter-Mountain
CHARLESTON — The West Virginia House of Delegates spent nearly two hours rejecting all but one secondary amendment and a committee amendment to Gov. Patrick Morrisey’s bill making changes to exemptions for the state’s school-age compulsory immunization program.
Senate Bill 460, relating to vaccine requirements, will be on third reading and up for passage Monday. An attempt to suspend the state constitutional rules requiring bills be read on three separate days to allow SB 460 to be passed Friday afternoon failed in a 74-22 vote, requiring four-fifths of members present to vote in favor.
After nearly two-and-a-half hours of debate beginning Friday morning and going into the afternoon, the House voted 51-44 in favor of the strike-and-insert amendment to SB 460 offered by the House Health and Human Resources Committee on Tuesday. But not before voting in favor of a secondary amendment which returned a religious vaccine exemption to the bill.
That committee amendment struck out a religious and philosophical exemption to West Virginia’s compulsory school-age vaccine program that came over from the state Senate in February and was in the bill as introduced on behalf of the governor. 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.
