U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday announced that COVID-19 vaccinations are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women.
In a 58-second video posted on the social media site X, Kennedy said he removed COVID-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for those groups. No one from the CDC was in the video, and CDC officials referred questions about the announcement to Kennedy and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
U.S. health officials, following recommendations from infectious disease experts, have been urging annual COVID-19 boosters for all Americans ages 6 months and older.
The decision was blasted by the Illinois-based American Academy of Pediatrics.
“This decision bypasses a long-established, evidence-based process used to ensure vaccine safety and ignores the expertise of independent medical experts, including members of CDC committees who are examining the evidence regarding the vaccine to make recommendations for the fall,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement.
“By removing the recommendation, the decision could strip families of choice. Those who want to vaccinate may no longer be able to, as the implications for insurance coverage remain unclear. It’s also unclear whether health care workers would be eligible to be vaccinated.”
O’Leary laid out the risks: “Pregnant women, infants and young children are at higher risk of hospitalization from COVID, and the safety of the COVID vaccine has been widely demonstrated.”
In a statement to the Sun-Times, a CVS Health spokesperson said the pharmacy chain, where people historically have been able to get vaccinated, follows “federal guidance regarding vaccine administration and are monitoring any changes that the government (FDA, CDC, ACIP, etc.) may make.”
A CDC advisory panel is set to meets in June to make recommendations about the fall shots. Among its options are suggesting shots for high-risk groups but still giving lower-risk people the choice to get vaccinated.
But Kennedy, a leading anti-vaccination advocate before becoming HHS secretary, decided not to wait. He said that annual COVID-19 booster shots have been recommended for kids “despite the lack of any clinical data” to support that decision.
Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Jay Battacharya, head of the National Institutes of Health, appeared in the video with Kennedy.
Kennedy and other Trump administration appointees have been moving to narrow COVID-19 vaccine recommendations and added restrictions to a recent vaccine approval. Last week, the FDA announced routine COVID-19 vaccine approvals will be limited to older adults and younger people with underlying medical risks, pending new research for healthy adults and children.
HHS officials did not immediately respond to questions about why Kennedy decided to take the step now or release more information about what went into the decision.