In a minute video, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F Kennedy JR revoked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation to vaccinate healthy children and healthy pregnant women for Covid-19, making some relevant experts and other relevant policies inconsistent with the details of the policy.
Kennedy joined the video released on May 27, published by Food and Drug Administration Director Marty Makary and National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya.
Kennedy, who was hired by President Donald Trump in a hug of years-long vaccine conspiracy theory, has not made it clear whether he refers to advice on children or first vaccination for subsequent enhanced shots or both. A few days after the announcement, HHS's website did not explicitly say: "The Covid-19-19 vaccine is available for everyone over 6 months. Getting vaccinated is the best way to help protect people from Covid-19." On January 7, Kennedy's previous role as secretary provided similar widespread vaccine recognition.
Some experts say the low rate of severe COVID cases among children justifies tightening federal vaccine recommendations. Others say the move will make it more difficult to get vaccinated and cause preventable serious illness.
Kennedy does not wait for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice to vote on vaccine guidance at a planned June meeting.
If insurance companies decide not to cover COVID-19 shooting for these groups, it is recommended to vaccinate certain groups, which may make it harder for most children and pregnant women to shoot. The CDC found in late April that the immunization rate was already low, with 13% of children and 14.4% of pregnant women being the 2024-25 version of the Covid-19-19-19-19 vaccine.
We fact checked the comments of three federal health officials and health experts.
"Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get shots again, despite the lack of any clinical data to support children's repeated reinforcement strategies," Kennedy said.
In recent years, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practice - a group of external experts, suggesting that the CDC should receive vaccination, frequency - recommends annual boosters for healthy children who have received COVID-19.
Dr. William Schaffner, professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, said the committee made the recommendation and did not recommend that the vaccines undergo new clinical trials every year. (The vaccine had already gained the safety and efficacy of the FDA in the early days of the pandemic.) The team concluded that the coronavirus vaccine works the same way as the annual flu vaccine that does not require repeated clinical trials.
The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians also recommend Covid-19 vaccinations in children and do not urge new clinical trials.
"There is no evidence that healthy kids need this vaccine," Makari said.
This is controversial. Most children will not face severe illness since 199, but a small number will face it. Given this risk scale, experts draw different lines when determining the general scope of vaccination plans.
During the 2024-25-Covid-19 season, children and adolescents aged 17 and under account for approximately 4% of hospitalizations for COVID-19-19. The relatively few serious cases in children have prompted some scientists to believe that universal vaccination recommendations are too broad.
However, among all children, the associated hospitalization rates were highest with six-month-old infants.
"There are 4 million new children born every year and without exposure to common conditions, young children suffer from illnesses that are 65 years old and older," Schaffner said.
Tara C Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University, said Covid-19 was one of the top ten causes of child deaths during the 2020-2022 pandemic. “Although we may not be at that stage anymore…we are vaccinating the flu, so why not continue to vaccinate the Covid vaccine?”
Some doctors worry about the lingering syndrome, called long scrolls, especially in children, especially popularity.
The external advisory committee and medical school have found that the level of this serious disease is sufficient to recommend continuing annual vaccination.
Makary was accurate when he said “most countries have stopped recommending routine vaccination for children”.
"Many countries only provide a common vaccine to children if they have underlying health conditions or are immune-deficient," said Brooke Nichols, associate professor of global health at Boston University.
Makary co-wrote a May 20 article that includes a list of booster recommendations for Canada, Europe and Australia. It says in most countries the recommendation is to vaccinate older people or at high risk.
Schaffner said most countries took the course because “so far, 95% of us have passed the vaccine or through the disease or both.
In 2024, the World Health Organization recommended the Covid-19-19 vaccine to children at health risks who have never been vaccinated. It is not routinely recommended for children and adolescents who have previously been vaccinated.
The European Medicines Agency recommends the use of the Biontech Pfizer vaccine for children over five years of age, and says that the use of the vaccine is effective and safe for children. EuroNeWS reported that the agency issued a recommendation in November 2021 and later recommended a modern vaccine, which targets children aged 12 to 17.
In the United Kingdom, “only older people or those with specific diseases or illnesses making them susceptible to severe COVID were recommended to get boosters, and as a result, uptake in those groups was actually higher than in the US,” where outreach and advertising for the vaccinations focused on children as well as older people, said Babak Javid, an associate professor in the division of experimental medicine at the University of California-San Francisco.
The New York Times found that in Europe, “many countries do not recommend vaccines for healthy children under the age of 5, but approval for everyone over 6 months is approved,” meaning that anyone at least six months old can use them safely.
Experts disagree with Kennedy's suggestion against vaccination of pregnant women, saying the vaccine protects pregnant women and their babies.
"It is obvious that Covid-19 infections during pregnancy can be catastrophic and can lead to severe disability, which can lead to destructive consequences in the family. In fact, there is an increasing amount of evidence that more and more vaccines are able to die in less than six months than those born women in six months, which is an untimely disease. Vaccination - unvaccinated mothers are born."
After vaccination, the antibodies arrive at the fetus. The doctors team said there is no evidence that the vaccine adversely affects the mother or the fetus, although fever or pain at the injection site is possible.
The federal government provided conflicting information about vaccines and pregnancy in May.
In Makary’s May 20 article, he and his co-authors include pregnancy in the CDC’s 2025 list of potential medical conditions that add to severe Covid-19.
"In a few days, they actually contradict themselves," said Dr. Peter Hotelz, co-director of development in Children's Hospital in Texas. "It seems RFK JR has turned his own FDA decision."
Following the May 27 video announcement, Makari told NBC that the decision on vaccination should be made between the pregnant woman and her doctor.
Reviews of 67 studies in 2024 found that fully vaccinated pregnant women were 61% less likely to get COVID-19 during pregnancy.
At the June meeting, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Measures may move towards recommendations for fewer vaccinated children, closer to the children enacted by Kennedy.
"If you listened to the discussion at your last recent meeting, they seemed to have acted in a more targeted way," Schaffner said.
Schaffner said the problem with pregnant women could be that the advisory committee might recommend the flexibility of vaccine use, rather than what Kennedy’s video statement implies.
Panels can support other areas of greater flexibility that may give other healthy people a caregiver, or live with more vulnerable people or suffer from immune-deficient lives.