As of today, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children and healthy pregnant women, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced this morning.
In a video posted on X, Kennedy was flanked by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Dr. Marty Makary, U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner, as he made the announcement.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” he said.
Kennedy said the Biden administration had recommended the boosters, even though it had no clinical data to support the recommendation.
“That ends today. It’s common sense and it’s good science,” Bhattacharya added.
Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense (CHD) — which early on urged the CDC not to recommend the vaccines for children, and challenged the agency after it did, celebrated the news.
“Hallelujah!” Holland said. She added:
“These dangerous, poorly tested shots have caused injuries and death to far too many children. And many of the vaccines’ long-term side effects remain unknown. This is a major step in the right direction.
“CHD urged the CDC not to add these dangerous vaccines to the childhood schedule. When we were ignored, we fought relentlessly to get them removed. This is a victory for all children and pregnant women.”
In 2022, CHD sued the FDA for granting emergency use authorization of the COVID-19 shots for children and babies. The lawsuit alleged the FDA misused emergency power to push dangerous biologics on minors. The organization appealed the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear it.
Even at the height of the pandemic, experts agreed that children were at extremely low risk from COVID-19. Soon after the shots were authorized, vaccine injury reports and peer-reviewed studies showed the vaccines were linked to myocarditis and pericarditis, particularly for young people, in addition to many other risks.
Yet, the public health agencies authorized the shot for people ages 16 and up from the start, and expanded that authorization to 12-year-olds by May of 2021. The FDA authorized the drug for children ages 5 and up in October 2021, and for babies 6 months and older in June 2022.
The COVID-19 vaccine never received FDA approval for children under age 12 — it remains under emergency use authorization.
Yet, the CDC added COVID-19 vaccination in February 2023 to its routine immunization schedule for children and adults, the agency’s vaccine advisers unanimously recommended it. The CDC has continued to recommend annual boosters for children.
The schedule is the basis for vaccine recommendations made by most physicians.
The CDC’s immunization schedule also provides formal guidance for state and local public health officials who set the rules for which vaccines are required to attend school. Children typically must receive all of the vaccines on the schedule to be considered “up to date” on their vaccinations.
Vaccines included on the childhood schedule are also paid for by the Vaccines for Children Program, which distributes cost-free vaccines to children whose families cannot afford to pay for them. More than 50% of children have their vaccine costs covered by the program, according to the CDC.
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported earlier this month, citing anonymous inside sources, that HHS was working on an imminent plan to stop recommending the shots. However, the agency never confirmed the WSJ report, which said an announcement was expected “in the coming days.”
Last week the FDA announced plans to limit approvals for updated COVID-19 vaccines to people over age 65 and people with one or more health conditions that put them at high risk for the virus.
According to the announcement, new COVID-19 shots for healthy children and adults must go through placebo-controlled clinical trials before they can be approved.
The announcement generated criticism from those who noted that because the approval plan would make the shots available to anyone in a high-risk group, many children and all pregnant women would still be eligible for the shots.
Today’s announcement appears to address the concern about pregnant women.
No one from the CDC was present at the announcement. The acting director, Susan Monarez, Ph.D., stepped down in March when she was nominated permanently to the position. Kennedy has reported that attorney Matthew Buzzelli is currently acting director.
