The United States will no longer recommend Covid-19 vaccines for children and healthy pregnant women, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday.
In a 58-second video posted on the social media site X, Kennedy, along with FDA commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya, said he removed COVID-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended immunisation schedule.
The changes come a week after they unveiled tighter requirements for COVID shots, effectively limiting them to older adults and those at risk of developing severe illness.
Traditionally, the CDC’s Advisory Committee for Immunisation Practices would meet and vote on changes to the immunisation schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the CDC’s director made a final call. The committee has not voted on these changes. A CDC advisory panel is set to meet in June to make recommendations about the fall shots.
These recent changes have drawn criticism.
“There’s no new data or information, just them flying by the seat of their pants,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, news agency AP reported.
Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins University, told AFP last week that while the new approach matched that taken by other countries, “I do think, however, that the initial Covid-19 vaccine series should be part of routine childhood immunisation.”
As of Tuesday morning, the CDC’s website, which had yet to reflect Kennedy’s announcement, stated that pregnant women are among people for whom it is “especially important” to receive the vaccine.
