BATON ROUGE - Governor John Bel Edwards rejected the Health and Welfare committee's decision to not include the COVID-19 vaccine to school's immunization schedule Tuesday. 

The vaccine will be required for students 16 and older, but parents can opt-out if they do not want their child to be vaccinated. 

Read the full statement here:

Today, in a letter to the House Committee on Health and Welfare, Gov. John Bel Edwards confirmed that the Louisiana Department of Health will move forward with adding the safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine to the schedule of immunizations for the populations for which it currently has full Food and Drug Administration approval, people 16 and older. All of Louisiana’s current opt-out provisions for parents will remain in place, meaning no child is forced to get a vaccine if their parents object in writing.

The COVID-19 vaccine is safe, effective and widely available across Louisiana. It is credited with reducing serious infection, hospitalizations and death.

“I understand that any issue around COVID-19, especially those that involve our children, can be divisive, I ask that you and your colleagues work with me to get more people in Louisiana vaccinated. It is worth noting that while many of the diseases on the public health immunization schedule were once both rampant and deadly, they are no longer serious risks for school age children in Louisiana. This is true because almost everyone was vaccinated against these diseases, many as a condition for attending elementary school.  One can only imagine where we would be as a state if the same overheated rhetoric from last week’s meeting was applied to Polio or Measles. The development of the COVID-19 vaccines in time to help us put this pandemic behind us also requires us to do everything we can to add COVID-19 to the list of diseases that no longer pose a serious threat,” Gov. Edwards wrote to committee chair Representative Larry Bagley.

Click here to download the Governor’s letter.

On Wednesday, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry announced he filed a lawsuit aiming to stop the school vaccine mandate.

Read the lawsuit here.