Reversing CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine recommendation

RFK Jr. eyes reversing CDC’s Covid-19 vaccine recommendation for children

He has raised doubts about the need for kids to get vaccinated against the disease.

By Adam Cancryn

HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is weighing pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for children, two people familiar with the discussions told POLITICO.

The directive under consideration would remove the Covid shot from the childhood vaccine schedule maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and widely used by physicians to guide vaccine distribution, marking Kennedy’s most significant move yet to shake up the nation’s vaccination practices.

Kennedy, a longtime anti-vaccine activist, has previously questioned the need for kids to get the shot, raising doubts about its safety and citing studies showing healthy children face an extremely low risk of death from Covid.

Eliminating the vaccine from the CDC schedule would not bar kids from receiving it. But the change would represent an extraordinary intervention by Kennedy to override the agency’s scientific decision-making and reverse a recommendation backed by the CDC and a slate of independent advisers just three years ago.

The removal would also likely influence vaccination procedures across the nation. Pediatricians rely on the CDC schedule to determine which vaccines they should give children and when to administer them, in order to protect against a range of common infectious diseases.

The schedule is also closely watched by insurers in deciding which vaccines to cover, as well as states and localities that determine which vaccines schools require for students — though no states currently mandate the Covid shot.

The specifics of the removal are still under discussion and could change, said the two people, who were granted anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

“No final decision has been made,” HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in response to questions about the vaccine’s spot on the childhood schedule.

But Kennedy has advocated internally to take the Covid vaccine off the schedule, the people said, arguing that there is minimal scientific evidence for including it among the earliest vaccines given to kids.

Children are unlikely to become severely ill or die from Covid, studies have shown, and most European countries no longer recommend additional annual doses for young people who are healthy.

Kennedy and his allies also believe that yanking the vaccine off the CDC schedule would rally voters who gravitated to Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement over their distrust of the government’s Covid response and his vows to scrutinize the government’s vaccine policies. Kennedy has criticized the independent panels that advise the CDC and other agencies on vaccines, accusing them of being captured by the pharmaceutical industry despite clear conflict-of-interest guardrails.

They have also contended that such a move is unlikely to generate major controversy among the broader public, reasoning that parents have already largely stopped vaccinating their kids against the disease.

Just 13 percent of children have gotten the latest Covid shot, according to the most recent CDC data. And after Republicans, led by President Donald Trump, turned the pandemic response into an increasingly partisan issue, states have veered away from efforts to require it.

Twenty-two states have instead enacted a ban on student Covid vaccine mandates, according to the National Academy for State Health Policy. Trump in February signed an executive order threatening to strip federal aid from any schools that require the vaccine.

Yet the change, if finalized, would still likely prompt opposition from public health experts and Kennedy skeptics who worry it could further undermine faith in vaccines and open the door to more drastic changes to the childhood schedule.

“It’s like in Jurassic Park, when the Tyrannosaurus rex keeps checking where in the fence is a weakness,” said Paul Offit, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “He could do a lot of harm. I think he will do a lot of harm unless somebody stops him.”

Kennedy initially pledged not to alter the schedule to win support for his confirmation from Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician who was a critical swing vote. But after taking over HHS, Kennedy vowed to reexamine the childhood schedule, calling it one of several topics that had previously been “taboo or insufficiently scrutinized.”

The CDC added the Covid vaccine to its immunization schedule after an outside advisory panel endorsed its inclusion unanimously in 2022. At the time, CDC officials said the decision would “normalize” the shot and encourage people to stay up to date on their vaccinations.

And while children are perhaps the group least at risk from Covid, CDC data show more than 1,800 kids have died from the disease, with hundreds of thousands more hospitalized.

But for Kennedy, reversing that decision would represent a significant step in a years-long personal crusade against the Covid vaccine. As chairman of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense, Kennedy amplified doubts and conspiracy theories about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness and launched several formal efforts to block authorization of the shot developed during Trump’s first term.

That included threatening legal action against the Food and Drug Administration in 2022 if it authorized the Covid vaccine for children under five years old, writing at the time that the group would “seek to hold you accountable for recklessly endangering this population with a product that has little, no, or even negative net efficacy but which may put them, without warning, at risk of many adverse health consequences.”

The FDA granted the authorization a few months later, spurring the CDC to recommend the vaccine soon afterward and add it to its childhood vaccine schedule.