HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering pulling the Covid-19 vaccine from the government’s list of recommended immunizations for children according to reports.
He has raised doubts about the need for children to get vaccinated against the virus.
After taking over HHS, Kennedy vowed to reexamine the childhood vaccine schedule, calling it one of several topics that had previously been “taboo or insufficiently scrutinized.”
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Politico reports: 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.
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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.