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The Big Story

RFK Jr. ends COVID vax guidance for kids, pregnant women

Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that his agency would no longer be recommending routine COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women, bypassing the traditional vaccine recommendation process.

In a video posted to X, Kennedy said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had removed the vaccines from its immunization schedule.

The current recommendation from the CDC is for everyone at least 6 months old, including pregnant women, to get COVID vaccines annually.

“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said in the video, flanked by Food and Drug Administration Commissioner (FDA) Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya.

The NIH typically is not involved in vaccine regulation, and the 58-second video did not offer any details about the evidence that led to the decision. HHS did not respond to questions.

Bypassed traditional process: Normally, the FDA decides whether to approve or authorize a vaccine. Then the CDC’s independent vaccine advisory panel meets in an open public meeting to decide questions like who should get it, when, and how often. The panel isn’t scheduled to meet on the COVID vaccine until June 25-27.

The CDC director will typically endorse the recommendations, so they can be implemented nationwide. The agency is currently without an acting director, and it appears Kennedy made the decision unilaterally.

Remember: The change in CDC recommendation comes a week after Makary and the agency’s top vaccine regulator announced a plan to limit the approval of new COVID-19 vaccines to adults over 65, as well as people who are high risk.

In the framework, the officials even listed pregnancy as a condition for high risk of COVID complications that would qualify a person for a booster.

Kennedy has a long history of opposition to a variety of vaccines and petitioned the FDA in 2021 to revoke the emergency-use authorizations of the COVID-19 vaccines. Makary and Bhattacharya are also prominent skeptics of the COVID-19 shot and vaccine mandates.

After President Trump won the 2024 presidential election but before Kennedy was confirmed as HHS secretary, he said in an interview that he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines” and rejected the label of being anti-vaccine.

Welcome to The Hill’s Health Care newsletter, we’re Nathaniel Weixel, Joseph Choi and Alejandra O’Connell-Domenech — every week we follow the latest moves on how Washington impacts your health.

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