NEW YORK (AP) – The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) adopted the recommendations of a new panel of vaccine advisers and stopped advising COVID-19 vaccines for anyone, leaving the decision up to patients.
The government health agency announced on Monday that it had adopted the recommendations issued last month by advisers designated by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Until this year, American health authorities, following infectious disease experts, recommended annual COVID-19 booster doses for all Americans aged 6 months and older. The idea was to refresh protection against the coronavirus as it evolved.
As the COVID-19 pandemic waned, experts increasingly debated the possibility of focusing vaccination efforts on the elderly, those 65 and older, who are among the groups most at risk of death and hospitalization.
But Kennedy, who has questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, abruptly announced in May that COVID-19 vaccines were no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. He also dismissed the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced it with a carefully chosen panel.
The new group voted last month in favor of letting all Americans make up their own minds. However, the CDC also states that vaccine decisions, especially for older people, should be discussed with a physician, nurse, or pharmacist.
The recommendation was endorsed by Health and Human Services Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill, who serves as the acting director of the CDC. O’Neill signed it last week, though HHS officials announced it on Monday.
The panel also urged the CDC to adopt more forceful language regarding vaccine risk statements, despite pushback from external medical groups who argued that vaccines have a proven safety record thanks to the billions of doses administered worldwide.
In a statement issued on Monday, O’Neill celebrated the shift, saying that the previous guidelines “deterred health professionals from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination.”
Major medical societies continue to recommend vaccines for young children, pregnant women, and others at higher risk of severe illness. They say that the Trump administration’s risk analysis exaggerated rare side effects and did not account for the dangers of coronavirus infection itself.
O’Neill also approved the panel’s recommendation that children under 4 years old receive their first varicella vaccine dose as a stand-alone shot, rather than a combined measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine.
There is a single-dose option that contains all four vaccines, but it carries a higher risk of fever and fever-related seizures. Since 2009, the CDC has indicated a preference for separate doses for the initial doses of these vaccines, and about 85% of young children already receive the varicella vaccine separately.
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