May 30 (UPI) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says children without underlying health conditions “may receive” a COVID-19 vaccine, contradicting a directive by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. earlier in the week.
The CDC updated the childhood immunization schedule published late Thursday. Kennedy, who said the agency would stop recommending the shots for healthy children, said the guidelines would be changed.
Instead, the agency recommends vaccines based on “shared clinical decision-making,” meaning children can get vaccinated if their parents and doctors agree.
This will also require health insurance companies, Medicare and Medicaid plans to continue to cover the vaccines for children.
“Where the parent presents with a desire for their child to be vaccinated, children 6 months and older may receive COVID-19 vaccination, informed by the clinical judgment of a healthcare provider and personal preference and circumstances,” the new language said.
HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Washington Post in an email Friday: “The CDC and HHS encourage individuals to talk with their healthcare provider on any medical decisions. Under the leadership of Secretary Kennedy, HHS is restoring the doctor-patient relationship. If a parent desires their healthy child to be vaccinated or if a pregnant woman desires to be vaccinated, their decision should be based on informed consent through the clinical judgment of their healthcare provider.”
Kennedy didn’t advise patients to consult doctors about the decision.
The pediatrics association and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists said Kennedy’s Tuesday announcement undermined public trust in vaccination policy and understated COVID-19 dangers. The CDC didn’t receive a directive to alter its recommendations until after Kennedy’s video posted.
“At least how some clinicians perceive it is, ‘You guys are the experts, and if you don’t know what the right thing to do is, how are we supposed to have that conversation in a 10-minute office visit?'” Sean O’Leary, chairman of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ committee on infectious diseases, told The Washington Post.
The shared clinical decision-making recommends COVID-19 vaccines for moderately or severely immunocompromised children, as well as most adults for now. COVID-19 vaccines during pregnancy are listed as “No Guidance/Not Applicable,” where they were previously recommended for all pregnant adults.
Kennedy said in his video announcement that healthy pregnant women were being removed from the immunization schedule for the COVID-19 vaccine.
This contradicts what is on the CDC website.
“Studies including 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,” one CDC webpage still reads. “The benefits of receiving a COVID-19 vaccine outweigh any potential risks of vaccination during pregnancy.”
The CDC advisory committee at its last meeting in April said it didn’t plan to lift the recommendation for pregnant women to get vaccinated.
Citing “a review of the recommendations” of the Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health, Kennedy’s memo said that the risks of the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children “do not outweigh the purported benefits of the vaccine.”
The directive also cited “the lack of high-quality data demonstrating safety of the mRNA vaccines during pregnancy combined with the uncertainty of the benefits” for pregnant women and their baby.
Agency officials overseeing shot recommendations said they were surprised by Kennedy’s move, CBS News reported.
“As you might be aware, the HHS Secretary issued a directive to CDC to update COVID-19 vaccine recommendations on the child and adult immunization schedules. In accordance with that instruction, CDC last night posted updated versions,” agency officials wrote in an email to staff Friday.
Richard Hughes IV, who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University Law School, told The Washington Post the directives raise questions about federal health officials’ approach.
“They are running roughshod over processes when they are doing all this. They’re just sort of trying to implement the biased positions that they came in with,” Hughes, a former vice president of public policy at Moderna. “I don’t think they thought it through a lot.”
This week, HHS notified Moderna that it was canceling contracts worth $766 million to develop, test and license vaccines for flu subtypes that could trigger future pandemics, including the dangerous H5N1 bird flu virus.
Pfizer was the first COVID-19 vaccine to receive emergency approval in December 2020 and Moderna was followed one week later.
The FDA first granted Pfizer-BioNTech full COVID-19 approval for those 12 and older in August 2021 and Moderna in January 2022. They remain available under emergency use authorization for children as young as 6 months.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine with age restrictions after a six-week delay. The agency approved the vaccine only for people 65 and older and those 12 and older with at least one underlying condition in which they are at a higher risk of severe illness.
Novavax uses more traditional protein-based technology than the mRNA vaccines of Pfizer and Moderna.
The first COVID-19 case was reported in the United States on Jan. 20, 2020.
About 23% of U.S. adults are estimated to be up to date with the vaccine, according to the CDC through April. For children 6 months and up to 18, it is an estimated 13.% the CDC reported.
