The federal government has removed the recommendation that children and pregnant women get routine COVID-19 vaccines.
Now, the CDC’s vaccine schedule recommends COVID vaccines for children through shared clinical decision-making — that is, if a doctor and a patient decide together that it makes sense.
And there’s no recommendation for pregnant women to get COVID vaccines.
The directive, viewed by NPR, ordered the CDC to remove these recommendations from their vaccine schedules.
Pregnant women remain at high risk for serious complications from the virus, according to the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Routine COVID-19 vaccinations for children and pregnant women are no longer recommended by the federal government.
A directive announced by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy on May 27 led to the change, which was reflected in updated vaccine schedules published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on May 30. Kennedy, Jr. in a one-minute video that was uploaded to X.
As Kennedy stated in the video, “I am extremely happy to announce that the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule as of today. This is a significant step toward fulfilling President Trump’s pledge to restore health to America.”. “,”.
The recommendations’ actual application is more complex.
Previously, it was standard practice for the CDC to recommend that all individuals aged six months and older receive yearly, updated COVID vaccinations.
The CDC’s vaccination schedule now suggests COVID vaccinations for kids based on shared clinical decision-making, which means a doctor and patient must agree that it makes sense. Pregnant women are not advised to receive the COVID vaccine.
We are happy to see that the U.S. S. . The American Academy of Pediatrics President, Dr. Susan Kressly, said in an emailed statement that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had revised its child and adolescent vaccination schedules to give families the option to continue vaccinating their children against COVID in consultation with their physician.
Kressly stated, “But the extremely flawed process to reach the recommendation raises serious concerns about the stability of the nation’s immunization infrastructure and commitment by federal leaders to ensure families can access critical immunizations, whether for COVID or other infectious diseases.”.
“CDC staff were unaware of the change to COVID-19 vaccine policy prior to the decision going public, so Kennedy’s announcement on May 27 caught them off guard,” a CDC official who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak to the media said.
CDC employees received a directive from Secretary Kennedy, dated May 19, but sent May 27, rescinding the department’s 2022 acceptance of the CDC’s recommendations for the use of COVID vaccines in children and during pregnancy. This directive was sent just hours after the post on X. The CDC was instructed to take these recommendations off of their vaccine schedules by the directive, which NPR saw.
The modifications run counter to the recommendations of professional medical organizations like the American Academy of Family Physicians and the American Academy of Pediatrics, which maintain that COVID vaccines are safe and effective vaccinations for children and expectant mothers. Their logos were on earlier iterations of the CDC’s vaccination schedules, but they are not on the current ones because their recommendations have changed.
While children are not likely to become seriously ill from COVID, some do, particularly those who are very young. According to the American Academy of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, pregnant women are still at a high risk of experiencing severe effects from the virus.
Experts in public health are concerned about the way the changes were implemented. Generally, “it’s a very transparent public process,” according to Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatrician at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and the AAP’s liaison to the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. The information is made available to the public, the debate is held in public, and a decision regarding vaccine recommendations is made. “.”.
The public debates and voting that have characterized vaccine policymaking for decades are upended by the closed-door procedure.
According to O’Leary, the decision will make it much more difficult for pregnant women to receive the vaccinations and for parents to vaccinate their children. With the recommendations loosened, fewer doctor’s offices might decide to keep the vaccines on hand because, according to him, “shared clinical decision-making conversations are really challenging to have in a ten-minute office visit.”.
According to Richard Hughes, a former executive at the vaccine company Moderna and current healthcare law and policy professor at George Washington University, some insurance companies might no longer cover them. According to him, “anticipate fluctuations in coverage, prior authorization, and out-of-pocket [costs], all of which will discourage uptake.”.
