State health and education officials are right to tighten rules on vaccine requirements for public school children. Here’s the question, though. Why is the process taking so long?

Recently the state Independent Regulatory Review Commission finished reviewing the more than 270 comments the public and interested parties made on the proposal — dating from last year — which would reduce the state’s provisional period from eight months to five days. The provisional period is the time during which when children who’ve not yet gotten all of their shots can get up to date. It would also add the pertussis (whooping cough) vaccine to the required list, along with a second dose of the meningococcal vaccine before 12th grade.

Now the state Department of Health will review both the 270-plus comments and the commission’s review, and respond, probably this fall. And the state legislative health and education committees will conduct their own reviews and revisions.

Okay, maybe this lengthy process is essential to determining the proposed new rules’ economic effect and how reasonable and workable they are. But there should be no doubt that having all school children immunized within a few days of when they enroll in school is in the public interest. A PublicSource analysis of eight years of state vaccination data last August found that 50 of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties not once reached the 95 percent vaccination threshold that confers herd immunity for measles, mumps and rubella in any of those eight years.

The current allowance of eight months to complete immunization exposes all school children to the risk of infection and the possible spread of preventable communicable diseases.

Vaccines protect the health of both these school children and everyone around them. Conversely, kids who don’t get vaccinated are not only susceptible themselves to illness, they can spread it to others. The tighter proposals are appropriate and will afford better protection for students and all Pennsylvanians. If there’s a way to speed up this process, concerned parents, school administrators and teachers, and state officials should pursue it.