Washington – The United States took the unprecedented step of reducing the number on Monday vaccines recommends for every child — a move that leading medical groups said would undermine protection against half a dozen diseases.
The change is effective immediately, that is US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will now recommend that all children be vaccinated against 11 diseases. What is no longer generally recommended is protection against influenzarotavirus, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, some forms of meningitis or RSV. Instead, protection against these diseases is only recommended for certain groups considered to be at high risk, or when doctors recommend them in so-called “shared decision-making”.
Trump administration officials have said the overhaul is a long-sought move Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy Jr.won’t cause families who want vaccines to lose access to them, and he said insurance will continue to pay. But medical experts said the decision creates confusion for parents and could increase the incidence of preventable diseases.
States, not the federal government, have the authority to require vaccinations for school children. While CDC requirements often influence these state regulations, some states have already begun creating their own alliances to counter the Trump administration’s vaccine guidelines.
Change is coming with vaccination coverage in the US they slipped and the share of children with exceptions reached an all-time high, according to federal data. At the same time, rates diseases which can be protected against by vaccines, such as measles and whooping cough is on the rise across the country.
The review came at the request of President Trump
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said the overhaul was in response to a request by President Donald Trump in December. Trump asked the agency to review how peer nations approach vaccine recommendations and consider revising U.S. guidelines accordingly.
HHS said its comparison with 20 peer nations found the U.S. to be an “outlier” in both vaccination rates and the number of doses it recommends for all children. Agency officials framed the change as a way to increase public confidence by recommending only the most important vaccinations for children.
“This decision protects children, respects families and restores confidence in public health,” Kennedy said in a statement Monday.
Responding to the news on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the new schedule was “much more reasonable” and “finally brings the United States together with other developed nations around the world.”
Among those that remain on the list recommended for everyone are vaccines against measles, whooping cough, polio, tetanus, chicken pox, and human papillomavirusor HPV. The guidelines reduce the number of recommended HPV vaccine doses from two or three doses depending on age to one for most children.
Medical experts said Monday’s changes, without what they said was a public debate or transparent review of the data, would put children at risk.
“Abandoning recommendations for vaccines that prevent influenza, hepatitis and rotavirus and changing HPV recommendations without a public process to weigh the risks and benefits will lead to more preventable hospitalizations and deaths among American children,” said Michael Osterholm of the Vaccine Integrity Project at the University of Minnesota.
Dr. Sean O’Leary of the American Academy of Pediatrics said countries carefully consider vaccine recommendations based on the level of disease in their populations and their health systems.
“You can’t just copy and paste public health, and they seem to be doing that here,” O’Leary said. “The children’s health and their lives are literally at stake.”
Most high-income countries recommend vaccination against a dozen to 15 serious pathogens, according to a recent assessment by the Vaccine Integrity Project, a group that works to ensure vaccine use.
France today recommends that all children be vaccinated against 14 diseases, compared to the 11 that the US will now recommend for every child under the new plan.
Medical groups are criticizing the decision
The changes were made by political leaders without any evidence that the current recommendations harm children, O’Leary said.
A pediatricians’ group has released its own childhood vaccination schedule, which its members adhere to, and continues to widely recommend vaccines that the Trump administration downgraded.
O’Leary highlighted the flu vaccine, which the government and leading medical experts have long urged almost everyone from 6 months of age. He said the government was “pretty tone deaf” for ending its advice while the country is at the start of a severe flu season and after 280 children died from the flu last winter, the most since 2009.
Even a disease parents may not have heard of, rotavirus, could make a comeback if vaccinations erode, he added. This diarrheal disease once hospitalized thousands of children every winter, which no longer happens.
The decision was made without input from an advisory committee that typically consults on the vaccination schedule, HHS officials said. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the changes publicly.
Officials added that the new recommendations were a joint effort between federal health agencies, but did not say who was consulted.
Scientists at the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases were asked to present vaccine schedules in other countries to the agency’s policy leadership in December, but were not allowed to make any recommendations and were not aware of any decisions on vaccine schedule changes, said Abby Tighe, executive director of the National Public Health Coalition, an advocacy organization for current and former CDC employees.
“Changes of this magnitude require careful review, expert and public input, and a clear scientific rationale. This level of rigor and transparency was not part of this decision,” said Dr. Sandra Fryhofer of the American Medical Association. “The scientific evidence remains unchanged, and the AMA supports the continued approach to childhood vaccinations recommended by national medical specialty societies.”
Kennedy is a long-time anti-vaccination skeptic
Movement comes as Kennedya longtime anti-vaccine activist, has repeatedly used his authority in government to translate his skepticism about injections into national guidelines.
In May, Kennedy announced that the CDC would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women — a move that was immediately challenged by public health experts, who saw no new data to justify the change.
In June, Kennedy fired the CDC’s entire 17-member vaccine advisory committee — later installing several of his own replacements, including many vaccine skeptics.
Kennedy also personally ordered the CDC in November leave your position that vaccines do not cause autism without providing any new evidence to support the change.
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