CDC Stops Recommending COVID Vaccines for Healthy Children, Pregnant Women

‘There’s no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children,’ FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said.

A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters in Atlanta, Ga., on Sept. 30, 2014. Reuters/Tami Chappell/File Photo

Health officials on May 27 announced they’re narrowing recommendations for COVID-19 vaccinations.

“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a video on social media platform X.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s online versions of the schedules were updated to reflect the changes.

The latest versions of the vaccines were cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 2024 without any clinical data. The CDC previously advised pregnant women and children to receive at least one dose of the currently available formulations of the shots, even if they had previously been vaccinated.

Those recommendations came “despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, said in the video: “That ends today. It’s common sense, and it’s good science.”

Dr. Marty Makary, the FDA’s commissioner, added: “There’s no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.”

The CDC, FDA, and National Institutes of Health are all part of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which Kennedy heads.

It’s not clear if the CDC was involved in the decision.

A query to the CDC was answered by the HHS. A spokesperson for HHS told The Epoch Times in an email that “as part of the Trump administration’s commitment to common sense, the COVID-19 vaccine will be removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule” and “HHS and the CDC remain committed to gold standard science and to ensuring the health and well-being of all Americans—especially our nation’s children—using common sense.”

Just 13 percent of children and 14 percent of pregnant women have taken one of the vaccines since the fall of 2024, according to CDC data.

The decision to remove the vaccines from the schedules for healthy children and pregnant women came after some members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices said during an April meeting that they supported narrowing the recommendations.

The panel, which provides vaccine advice to the CDC, was expected to discuss the matter further and hold a formal vote establishing its position during its next meeting, in June.

Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, who founded Americans for Health Freedom and practices in Texas, was among those who praised Kennedy’s announcement, calling it “wonderful news” in a post on X.

Some others criticized the move.

“Pregnant women who get covid are at increased risk of complications to themselves and their babies. Vaccines reduce those risks,” Dr. Ashish Jha, the dean of the Brown University School of Public Health and a COVID-19 official during President Joe Biden’s administration, wrote on X. “That’s what American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology says (and CDC used to say). Why not leave it to women to choose? Why take away the choice?”

While people can still receive vaccines that are not on the schedules, insurers typically do not cover those immunizations. Jha said Medicaid likely would not either.

Makary and Dr. Vinay Prasad, the FDA’s top vaccine official, recently announced that the agency’s new COVID-19 vaccine framework would authorize updated vaccines with just immunobridging data for people aged 65 and older and people who are younger and have a risk factor such as obesity that places them, according to the CDC, at higher risk for severe COVID-19 outcomes.

For everyone else, vaccine manufacturers would have to present clinical trial data showing the vaccines prevented symptomatic COVID-19, the officials said.

The agency on May 22 told Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax that they should update their COVID-19 vaccines to target LP.8.1, a subvariant of the JN.1 strain that has been dominant in the United States.

The companies could, however, maintain the current formulations, the FDA said.

The currently available Pfizer and Moderna shots target KP.2. The Novavax vaccine targets JN.1.