In a one-minute video, US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy JR revoked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where healthy children and healthy pregnant women have been vaccinated for COVID-19, with some experts and others not sure about the details of the policy.
Kennedy took part in the video, posted on X on May 27th, with Food and Drug Director Marty McCurry and Director Jay Batacharya, Director of the National Institute of Health.
Tapped by President Donald Trump after a long-standing embrace of vaccine conspiracy theory, Kennedy didn’t make it clear whether he was referring to a child or pregnant woman being vaccinated for the first time, in order to get a booster shot afterwards, or both. A few days after the announcement, the HHS website was not clarified. The Center for the Disease Control and Prevention Webpage dated January 7th before Kennedy became secretary, provided approval for a similar broad vaccine.
Some experts say the low rates of significant Covid-19 cases among children justify tightening federal vaccine recommendations. Others say the movement makes it difficult to get vaccinated and cause serious diseases that can be prevented.
Kennedy broke the norm by not waiting for the Center for the Disease Control and Prevention Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices to vote for vaccine guidance at a scheduled meeting in June.
By recommending a particular group of vaccinations, it could make it difficult for most children and pregnant women to get the shot if the insurance company decides not to cover Covid-19 shots for those groups. Vaccination rates are already low, with 13% of children and 14.4% of pregnant women being the latest in the CDC’s 2024-25 edition of Covid-19 vaccines discovered in late April.
We have confirmed the facts of three federal health officials’ comments with health experts.
Kennedy said there is no clinical data for the children’s vaccine booster.
“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another Covid shot despite the lack of clinical data to support their children’s repetitive booster strategies,” Kennedy said.
In recent years, the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices (a group of external experts who advise the CDC, and how often) has recommended annual boosters for healthy children who have already received the COVID-19 vaccine.
The committee made this recommendation without recommending that all annual repeats of the vaccine be taken to new clinical trials before they are used, said Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. (The vaccine was approved by the FDA for safety and efficacy early in the pandemic.) The panel concluded that the coronavirus vaccine worked in the same way as the annual influenza vaccine, which did not require repeated clinical trials.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians also recommended Covid-19 vaccinations for children and did not encourage new clinical trials.
Children generally do not need vaccinations, the FDA chief said.
McCurry said “There is no evidence that healthy children need it.”
This is contested. Most children will not face serious illnesses since Covid-19, but there are only a few. Given the magnitude of this risk, experts draw different lines when determining how extensively a vaccination programme should be needed.
During the Covid-19 season from 2024 to 25, children and adolescents under the age of 17 accounted for approximately 4% of Covid-19-related hospitalizations. A relatively small number of serious cases among children drives belief among some scientists that universal vaccination recommendations are too widespread.
However, among all children, Covid-19-related hospitalization rates were the highest among infants under six months of age.
“As 4 million new children are born without exposure to Covid each year, young children have similar disease rates to those over 65,” Schaffner said, citing an article on the CDC website in September 2024.
Covid-19 was one of the top 10 causes of child deaths during the worst pandemic from 2020 to 2022, said Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University. “We may not be at that stage anymore… but we’ll be vaccinated for the flu.
Some doctors are concerned about long-term syndrome, known as long-term covid, especially among children.
An external advisory board and medical scholars determined that this level of serious illness was sufficient to recommend continuous annual vaccination.
McCurry said the policy is similar to that of other countries.
McCurry was accurate when he said that “most countries have stopped recommending” regular Covid-19 vaccines for children.
“Many countries only offer covid vaccines to children if they have underlying health conditions or are immune deficiency,” said Brook Nichols, an associate professor of global health at Boston University.
Makary co-written a May 20th article that includes a list of booster recommendations for Canada, Europe and Australia. In most countries, the recommendation was to vaccinate elderly or at high risk people.
Schaffner said most countries take the course.
In 2024, the World Health Organization recommended the Covid-19 vaccine to children at health risk who have never been vaccinated. For children and adolescents who had previously been vaccinated, it did not recommend re-calculation on a daily basis.
The European Medicines Agency has recommended the Biontec Pfizer vaccine for children aged 5 and over, saying that using the vaccine for children is effective and safe. Euronows reported that the agency issued a recommendation in November 2021, later recommending the Moderna vaccine for children aged 12-17.
In the UK, “only older people or people with certain illnesses or illnesses were recommended to win boosters, resulting in higher intakes in those groups in fact higher than in the US,” and outreach for vaccination focused on older people as well as children.
The New York Times found that in Europe, “many countries do not recommend vaccines for healthy children under the age of five, but shots are approved for everyone over six months.”
Doctors say the vaccine protects pregnant women
Experts opposed Kennedy’s recommendation to vaccinate, saying the vaccine protects pregnant women and their babies.
“It’s very clear that Covid-19 infections during pregnancy are devastating and can lead to major disability. Vaccination – born to an unvaccinated mother,” said Stephen J. Fleischman, chairman of American obstetrics scientist and gynecologist.
After vaccination, the antibodies reach the fetus. A group of doctors said fever and pain at the injection site is possible, but there is no evidence that the vaccine causes adverse effects on either the mother or the fetus.
In May, the federal government provided conflicting information about vaccines and pregnancy.
In a May 20 article in Makary, he and his co-authors included pregnancy on the CDC’s 2025 list of underlying medical conditions, which increases the risk of severe Covid-19.
“They were literally inconsistent over the course of several days,” said Dr. Peter Hotes, Co-Directoral Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital. “It appears that RFK JR has overturned his own FDA decision.”
Following the May 27 video announcement, McCurry told NBC that vaccination decisions should be between pregnant women and doctors.
A 2024 review of 67 studies found that the likelihood of Covid-19 infection during pregnancy in fully vaccinated pregnant women was 61% lower.
What’s next?
At the June meeting, the Advisory Committee on Vaccination Practices could move to a less-cleaning recommendation for vaccinating children close to children enacted by Kennedy.
“If we heard the discussion at the latest previous meeting, they seemed to be moving with a more target-rich approach,” Schaffner said.
The issue of pregnant women’s issues could potentially recommend flexibility from vaccine use than what Kennedy’s video statement appears to suggest, Schaffner said.
Other areas where the panel can back up greater flexibility are also found for healthy people who serve as caregivers, and for healthy people who live with more vulnerable people who are older or have become immune deficient.
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