Maryland Bill Lets Pharmacists Order Vaccines for You—Logging Your Name in State Tracking System Without Any Patient-Request Requirement

HB 1135 anticipates future "public health emergency," names influenza and COVID-19.

Apr 03, 2026

A Maryland bill that has already cleared the House and is racing through the Senate would grant pharmacists authority to order certain vaccines for specific individuals—and require them to immediately log the named “intended recipient” into the state’s permanent immunization database—even though the engrossed text does not expressly require the person to request the shot, consent, or even be notified.

House Bill 1135 (HB 1135) expands pharmacist authority while creating a new pre-administration tracking pipeline.

The bill contains zero language requiring patient request, consent, or notification before a name is entered into the state system.

The legislation is sponsored by 18 democrat Maryland lawmakers.

Senators who will be voting on the bill can be contacted here.

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The Bill’s Explicit New Powers

The legislation rewrites Maryland law (§ 12–508) to state, in all-caps for emphasis in the engrossed version:

“a pharmacist may order A VACCINATION FOR INTRANASAL ADMINISTRATION OR administer a vaccination to an individual who is at least 3 years old if…”

It then mandates:

“A pharmacist shall report all vaccinations administered OR ORDERED by the pharmacist, INCLUDING THE INTENDED RECIPIENT OF EACH VACCINATION ORDERED BY THE PHARMACIST, to the ImmuNet Program established under § 18–109 of the Health – General Article.”

Pharmacists would be authorized to generate a vaccine order tied to any named person (age 3 and up for qualifying vaccines).

The state would then be required to record that person’s identity in its central registry before any injection occurs, even though the bill adds no patient-request step for the order or the resulting report.

No Patient Request Required—By Design

Search the entire four-page engrossed bill and you will not find the words “request,” “ask,” “consent,” “patient initiation,” or any equivalent safeguard.

The trigger written into the statute is the pharmacist’s decision to order the vaccine and attach a name to it, subject only to the bill’s training, protocol, and vaccine-category conditions.

The reporting requirement applies to influenza, COVID-19, public-health-emergency vaccines, and other CDC-recommended or FDA-approved vaccines once training requirements are met.

Because the bill now separates “ordering” from “administering,” a pharmacist could place the order, log the named individual in ImmuNet, and never give the shot.

Yet the state record would still exist.

State Registry Gets ‘Intended Recipients’ Before Shots Are Given

Every ordered vaccine triggers an immediate entry into Maryland’s ImmuNet system with the identity of the “intended recipient.”

This creates a forward-looking surveillance mechanism that records not just who has been vaccinated, but who has been pre-designated for vaccination.

All without the bill requiring the person’s knowledge or request.

Critics warn this sets up a pre-administration tracking system that can identify citizens by name without their consent, potentially listing them as “intended vaccine recipients” even if they later refuse the shot.

What This Means

If HB 1135 becomes law (effective October 1, 2026), pharmacists would have clear statutory authority to initiate vaccine orders for named individuals and automatically enroll those individuals in the state’s immunization tracking database at the pharmacist’s initiation, subject to the bill’s conditions.

The bill’s text contains no express patient-request firewall.

For example, a pharmacist could preemptively order flu shots for every resident in a nursing home.

Those names could appear in ImmuNet immediately, even if some residents object or never receive the shot.

Bottom line

Maryland HB 1135 would create an unprecedented pathway for pharmacists to place people into the state vaccine registry through an order alone, without any requirement in the law that the individual ever asked for the vaccine.

The state would receive the record the moment the pharmacist decides to act.

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