CDC Removes COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendation for Healthy Kids, Pregnant Women
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy kids and pregnant women. Previously, the agency recommended annual COVID-19 shots for everyone 6 months and older.
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced the change on Tuesday, citing a lack of evidence for giving the shots to healthy children. The secretary made the announcement alongside Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, Director of the National Institutes of Health; and Marty Makary, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration.
“As of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant woman has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” the secretary said.
“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot,” he continued, “despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”
“That ends today,” said Director Bhattacharya. “It’s common sense and it’s good science.”
Dr. Makary added, “There’s no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.”
Updated guidance from the CDC on immunizations now says children ages 6 months to 17 years old with no underlying health conditions “may receive” COVID-19 vaccines:
In October 2022, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously to include COVID-19 vaccines on the childhood immunization schedule.
At the time, the Daily Citizen spoke with Dr. William Toffler, Professor Emeritus of Family Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University, who has been a family physician for over 40 years.
“This move by the ACIP is incredibly misguided. The science does not support this,” Dr. Toffler told us. “The reality is that several countries around the world have restricted the use of these vaccines for those under 30.”
“ACIP’s decision seems to be based more on a political narrative than on a medical one,” he added. “To give this to children is essentially inappropriate. Children are at very low risk from COVID-19, and yet they are at risk for negative side effects from the shots, which may be worse than the disease itself.”
Likewise, Dr. Makary – then a professor at Johns Hopkins University, and one of the leading medical doctors in the world – spoke out against the decision at the time.
“There has never been a vaccine added to the child immunization schedule without solid clinical evidence that it reduces disease significantly in the community,” Makary said. “The COVID vaccine in children will be the first – it will be added with no clinical data.”
Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, dating back to early 2020, it’s been widely known that children, and other healthy adults, were not – by and large – at immense risk from COVID-19. The virus largely targeted elderly adults, and others with significant and numerous comorbidities.
According to the CDC, from the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic through September 27, 2023, there were 1,696 deaths among those ages 0-17 that “involved COVID-19,” meaning the child or adolescent died “with confirmed or presumed COVID-19.” That doesn’t necessarily mean that child died from COVID-19, however.
Among all ages, there were 1,146,774 deaths “involving COVID-19.” This means children and adolescents accounted for only 00.14% of deaths with or from COVID-19 throughout the pandemic.
Dr. Aaron Glatt, the chair of the department of medicine at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, N.Y., told The New York Times following Tuesday’s announcement, “A perfectly healthy 3-year-old, he doesn’t have any medical problems, he’s had Covid once or twice — I’m not sure that there’s any scientific data to support vaccination.”
Related articles and resources:
Florida Grand Jury Releases Final Report, Slams Big Pharma’s ‘Deceptive Behavior’
CDC Votes to Add COVID-19 Vaccines to Childhood Immunization Schedule
Photo from Getty Images.
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