The moral and religious obligation to vaccinate children in Jewish ethics

Rashi, Tsuriel

In recent years, more and more religious communities have been refusing to vaccinate their children, so although the incidence of measles has decreased drastically around the world, today's vaccine hesitancy might well cause an epidemic. These communities justify their resistance to inoculation on various religious grounds and make common cause with secular groups who oppose vaccination for their own reasons. Vaccine hesitancy has been identified by the World Health Organization as one of the top ten global health threats of 2019. The COVID-19 pandemic has affected tens of millions of people and caused the death of over 3 million. In December 2020, the Moderna and Pfizer drug companies announced they had succeeded in producing vaccines against COVID-19 and received approvals to distribute the vaccines from various regulators including the FDA in the United States and the European EMA. A mass vaccination effort began in many countries around the world.