- COVID-19 Vaccine Still on CDC Schedule for Kids
- HHS Secretary Kennedy Ends COVID Vaccine Guidance for Kids, Pregnant Women
- Pfizer, Moderna Told to Update COVID-19 Vaccine Warning Labels
COVID-19 Vaccine Still on CDC Schedule for Kids
Source: The Hill
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has issued updated guidance on administering the COVID-19 vaccine to children a few days after Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr., said the agency would stop recommending the shot to kids and pregnant women.
The CDC still has the COVID-19 inoculation on its vaccine schedule for kids, despite Secretary Kennedy saying it would be removed.
On May 27, Secretary Kennedy said in post on the social media platform X that the CDC would no longer recommend routine COVID-19 shots to healthy children and pregnant women.
Now, the agency says that children without an underlying health condition “may receive” the COVID-19 vaccine and advises “shared clinical decision-making” between parents and physicians. In the past, the CDC has broadly recommended that children get the vaccine.
“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 guidelines now read.
The CDC’s new guidelines mean that health insurance companies are ostensibly required to cover the shot, for the most part.
But some health insurance companies have a history of not covering drugs listed on “shared clinical decision-making” recommendations, healthcare lawyer Richard Hughes IV told The Hill.
“Based on my collective observations of payer coverage of vaccines, the bottom line is expect variability in coverage, prior authorization, and out-of-pocket, all of which will discourage uptake.”
It is still unclear how the CDC’s guidelines regarding the COVID-19 vaccine for pregnant people will change. The CDC previously recommend the vaccine to all pregnant people, but now the agency’s official stance on whether to give the inoculation to those who are expecting is “no guidance,” according to a memo obtained by The New York Times.
Some CDC webpages still recommend that the vaccine be administered to pregnant women given their increased change of developing serious illness from the virus.
Read The Hill’s full coverage online.
HHS Secretary Kennedy Ends COVID Vaccine Guidance for Kids, Pregnant Women
Source: The Hill
On May 27, Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced 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, Secretary 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,” Secretary Kennedy said in the video, flanked by Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner 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.
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 Wednesday-Friday, 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 Secretary Kennedy made the decision unilaterally.
The change in CDC recommendation comes a week after Commissioner 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.
Secretary 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. Commissioner Makary and Director Bhattacharya are also prominent skeptics of the COVID-19 shot and vaccine mandates.
After President Trump won the 2024 presidential election but before Secretary 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.
Pfizer, Moderna Told to Update COVID-19 Vaccine Warning Labels
Source: Family Medicine SmartBrief
The Food and Drug Administration has instructed Pfizer and Moderna to update the warning labels on their COVID-19 vaccines to include a heart injury risk for males ages 16 to 25.
The vaccines had included warnings about the heart risk but the new requirements will harmonize the age cohorts involved. The agency noted that the “highest estimated incidence was in males 16 through 25 years of age,” at 38 cases per million.
Read the full story on CBS News.