CDC ends Covid vaccine advice for healthy kids and pregnant women

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will not recommend routine Covid shots for healthy children and pregnant women, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday.

“We are actually one step closer to realizing @POTUS’s promise to Make America Healthy Again,” he said in a post on X.

Kennedy said the vaccine would not be beneficial for “healthy pregnant women,” however it was unclear who would qualify as pregnancy itself is taken into account a risk factor for Covid complications.

The change from the CDC comes every week after Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the agency planned to limit using Covid shots to older adults and kids and adults with underlying medical conditions.

Recent Covid shots for healthy children and adults might want to undergo lengthy placebo-controlled clinical trials before they’ll get approved.

Kennedy has an extended history of opposition to quite a lot of vaccines, including the Covid shot. In 2021, he filed a citizen petition requesting that the FDA revoke the authorization of the vaccines. The identical yr, he described the Covid vaccines as “the deadliest vaccine ever made,” specifically as a consequence of rare cases of myocarditis in young men. Studies have found that the risk of myocarditis is higher in individuals with a Covid infection and typically more severe than after vaccination. 

Under Kennedy, the FDA slow-walked the approval of Novavax’s shot before approving it earlier this month. In an unusual move, the FDA limited its use to people 65 and older and youths and adults with at the very least one condition that puts them in danger for severe illness.

There aren’t any mandates within the U.S. for anyone to get the Covid shot.

But experts say that tens of millions of individuals, even those that have had a previous Covid infection, still may have one other dose because they’re vulnerable to severe disease from the virus, particularly older adults, individuals with weakened immune systems and pregnant women. 

At the peak of the Covid pandemic, doctors reported an unprecedented surge in pregnant women hospitalized and in critical condition after a Covid infection.

Changes in a lady’s immune system while pregnant increases the chance of complications like pneumonia from many respiratory viruses, including Covid. Last month, researchers at Brown University School of Public Health published a study finding that maternal deaths spiked when the pandemic hit.

While Covid cases, including related hospitalizations and deaths, are currently low, the virus remains to be circulating.

“We still have children in our emergency department with Covid. After we see them, they’ve bronchiolitis or bronchitis,” said Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Kid’s Hospital of Pennsylvania. “Do they consider that undeserving of prevention?”

The CDC previously beneficial Covid vaccines across the board for everybody 6 months and older.

“One in every of the things that I relied on as a pediatrician was an assurance that the recommendations that got here to me were based on the perfect available science and evidence, and got here from the work of the expert advisors to the CDC,” said Dr. Richard Besser, former acting director of the CDC and president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.” That is clearly not coming from that direction, and that is greatly concerning.”

There are concerns amongst infectious disease and vaccine experts whether Covid vaccines will likely be available in any respect for fall. In 2024, boosters were approved by August and so they were widely available by October.

The FDA’s vaccine advisory committee met Thursday to make a advice on which strains must be included in the following round of shots. Summer waves of Covid have occurred every year since 2020 before rising again in the autumn and winter through the typical flu season.

There is not any indication yet that the U.S. is entering a wave this summer, but experts are keeping a detailed eye on the latest variant, called LP.8.1.

The variant is an Omicron offshoot. In February, the World Health Organization said that it was monitoring LP.8.1. As of May 10, it made up 70% of Covid cases within the U.S. The CDC was expected to offer a more current take a look at the variant breakdown May 24, but hasn’t yet done so.

The WHO can be monitoring one other variant, NB.1.8.1, which has been reported in several states.

The anticipated rollout of the shots this fall is perhaps in danger after a major change under guidance from Kennedy and Makary in how the vaccines are tested.

Under the change by Kennedy, all recent vaccines might want to undergo placebo-controlled clinical trials — where some people get the actual shot and others get something inactive, like a saline shot — to match the outcomes. 

The unique Covid vaccines, from Pfizer and Moderna, approved in late 2020, went through placebo-controlled trials.

Pfizer and Moderna are charging as much as $150 per dose for a Covid vaccine, based on the CDC’s vaccine price list. The agency doesn’t list the fee of the Novavax vaccine, which was fully approved earlier this month.

Medicare and Medicaid require that the vaccines are free for patients. The Reasonably priced Care Act, more commonly referred to as Obamacare, requires private insurers to cover all vaccines which are beneficial by the CDC’s vaccine committee and director.

Children without insurance can get free vaccines through the government-run Vaccines for Children Program. But massive cuts to health care funding unveiled in March forced some local and state health departments to put off staff and cancel vaccine clinics.

If the CDC stops recommending Covid vaccines for youngsters or pregnant women, the query arises: Will private insurance or Medicaid proceed to cover the fee of the brand new boosters?

“It’ll be a cascade of events,” Offit said. “It’ll be insurance firms may not pay for it, the vaccine for youngsters’s program may not pay for it, but due to this fact dearer, less available and fewer used.”