The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has removed COVID-19 vaccines from immunization schedules for healthy children and pregnant women, according to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Kennedy made the announcement on May 27.
Here’s what to know.
Child Recommendation Was Universal
The CDC in 2023 added COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule.
COVID-19 vaccines were recommended for children aged 6 months and older under the universal recommendation.
The recommendation advised doctors and parents that unvaccinated children under 5 should receive two doses of Moderna’s vaccine or three doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech shot, unvaccinated children aged 5 to 11 should receive one dose of either shot, and unvaccinated children aged 12 to 18 should receive one dose of Moderna’s vaccine, one dose of Pfizer’s vaccine, or two doses of Novavax’s shot.
Vaccinated children were recommended to receive at least one dose, depending on how many doses and which vaccines they’d received before.
According to the CDC, just 13 percent of youth and 14 percent of pregnant women have received one of the newest vaccines, which were cleared in 2024 without human testing data.
The CDC also recommended that women who are pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or breastfeeding receive one of the updated COVID-19 vaccines, even if they’d received one in the past.
Recommendations Haven’t Been Updated
Kennedy said in a video statement that “as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.”
As of May 28, the CDC schedule for children has not been updated to reflect the change.
The schedule was last updated on Nov. 21, 2024, according to the CDC’s website.
The CDC webpages outlining vaccination recommendations for pregnant women have also not changed.
Both were last changed in June 2024, according to the site.
The CDC did not respond when asked when the schedules would be updated.
“As part of the Trump administration’s commitment to common sense, the COVID-19 vaccine will be removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule,” a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email.
Change Came Without Formal Advice
The CDC’s vaccine advisers, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, discussed COVID-19 vaccines during a meeting in April.
A subgroup of the panel that studied the matter said that COVID-19 vaccines should no longer be universally recommended. The advisers supported any other posture, such as recommending the vaccines only for certain age groups. Some panel members expressed concerns about a change, and the committee did not take a vote.
The advisers had been slated to vote on the topic during their next meeting, in June, according to the CDC.
The CDC is not bound by the committee’s advice but often adopts it.
The panel in 2022 advised the CDC to add the COVID-19 vaccines to the childhood immunization schedule.
A dose of the COVID-19 vaccines available from 2023 to 2024 conferred an additional 52 percent protection for young children and 64 percent protection for those aged 5 to 17 against emergency department and urgent care encounters through August 2024, the CDC said in a presentation to a different advisory committee. That protection plummeted over time to 25 percent and 34 percent, respectively.
The American Academy of Pediatrics said the removal of the COVID-19 vaccines from the childhood schedule was concerning.
“By removing the recommendation, the decision could strip families of choice,” Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the academy’s Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement. “Those who want to vaccinate may no longer be able to, as the implications for insurance coverage and access remain unclear.”
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) also expressed opposition to the change in the recommendation for pregnant women.
“We are concerned about access implications and what this recommendation will mean for insurance coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine for those who do choose to get vaccinated during pregnancy,” ACOG said.
CDC’s Involvement Unclear
It’s not clear whether the CDC was involved in the decision to narrow the CDC’s vaccine recommendations.
Kennedy’s announcement was made alongside National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
The CDC currently has an acting director, a lawyer named Matthew Buzzelli, according to the health secretary. Buzzelli does not have a medical degree or public health experience, according to his biography.
President Donald Trump has named Susan Monarez, a CDC official with a doctorate in immunology and microbiology, as CDC director, but the Senate has not yet confirmed her.
Kennedy and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have also not cited any studies in support of the change.
“As Commissioner Makary said, ‘There’s no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries stopped recommending it for children.’ With the COVID-19 pandemic behind us, it is time to move forward,” a spokesperson for the department told The Epoch Times in an email. “HHS and the CDC remain committed to gold standard science and to ensuring the health and well-being of all Americans—especially our nation’s children—using common sense.”
COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations have fallen sharply since the Omicron variant sent them soaring in early 2022. The World Health Organization declared the pandemic over in the spring of 2023.
The removal came after FDA officials said that they would clear COVID-19 vaccines for healthy Americans aged 64 and younger only if companies presented clinical trial data supporting such a decision.
The officials noted the low uptake of COVID-19 vaccines and said that they did not know, based on the available evidence, whether healthy people who previously had COVID-19 and were vaccinated would benefit from additional doses.