By Manas Mishra and Michael Erman
(Reuters) -The U.S. has stopped recommending routine COVID-19 vaccinations for pregnant women and healthy children, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr announced in a social media post on Tuesday, circumventing the CDC’s traditional recommendation process.
Kennedy, FDA commissioner Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya said in a video that the shots have been removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommended immunization 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 Immunization Practices would meet and vote on changes to the immunization schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before the director of the CDC made a final call. The committee has not voted on these changes.
Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic whose department oversees the CDC, has been remaking the U.S. health system to align with President Donald Trump’s goal of dramatically shrinking the federal government.
“Last year, the Biden Administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot despite the lack of clinical data to support repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said in the video.
The CDC, following its panel of outside experts, previously recommended updated COVID vaccines for everyone aged six months and older.
Insurers said they are reviewing the regulatory guidance to determine their policies, which typically follow the ACIP recommendations.
A spokesperson for CVS Health said the company is determining whether changes in health insurance coverage are required as the federal government reassesses COVID-19 vaccine eligibility, while a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association spokesperson said preventative health benefits, including COVID vaccines, are essential in keeping patients healthy.
‘TURNED UPSIDE DOWN’
“The recommendation is coming down from the secretary, so the process has just been turned upside down,” said William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a consultant to the ACIP.
Schaffner said the CDC’s panel was to vote on these issues at a June meeting, where he had expected them to favor more targeted shots instead of a universal vaccine recommendation. “But this seems to be a bit preemptory,” he said.
Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Law San Francisco, said in a Facebook post that going around the advisory committee might hurt the agency in the case of potential litigation.
Studies with hundreds of thousands of people around the world show that COVID-19 vaccination before and during pregnancy is safe, effective, and beneficial to both the pregnant woman and the baby, according to the CDC’s website.
But Makary said in the video that there was no evidence that healthy children need routine COVID shots. Most countries have stopped recommending it for children, he added.
COVID vaccine makers Moderna and Pfizer did not respond to requests for comment.
Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth who co-wrote an editorial with Makary during the COVID pandemic against masks for children, said he agreed with the decision.
He said he felt the U.S. had been overemphasizing the importance of the COVID vaccine for young children and pregnant women, and that previous recommendations were based on politics, adding that the severity of the illness generated by the virus seems to have lessened over time in young children.
(Reporting by Manas Mishra in Bengaluru and Michael Erman in New York; Editing by Arun Koyyur, Maju Samuel and Bill Berkrot)
