'A canary in a coal mine': Doctors react to RFK Jr.'s decision to end COVID vaccine recommendations for healthy children, pregnant women
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday that his agency will no longer be recommending the coronavirus vaccine for healthy pregnant women and healthy children.
In a 58-second video posted on X, Kennedy, standing alongside Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, the National Institutes of Health director, and Marty Makary, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said the vaccine had been removed from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention immunization schedule for those groups of people.
'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,' Kennedy said in the video.
The new policy also follows last week's decision by the FDA to limit COVID shots to those over 65 with high-risk conditions. As of Wednesday morning, the CDC's website was still recommending an annual coronavirus vaccine for everyone 6 months old and older, and advising that the vaccine is 'especially important if you are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant or might become pregnant in the future.'
Yahoo News spoke to doctors about some of their biggest concerns and sources of confusion, following Kennedy's announcement.
Kennedy did not offer a detailed explanation on Tuesday for why the CDC will no longer recommend the vaccination for healthy pregnant women.
The CDC previously reported that pregnant women are more likely to become very sick from COVID compared to nonpregnant people and, if exposed to the virus, have an increased risk of pregnancy complications, including preterm birth and stillbirth. The World Health Organization also recommends COVID shots for pregnant women.
Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health and Security, told Yahoo News that the new guidance seems contradictory because 'pregnancy is a high-risk condition for COVID.'
'Multiple studies have shown that COVID during pregnancy has significant consequences for the pregnant woman,' Adlaja said. 'Not recommending pregnant women be vaccinated requires evasion of that knowledge and is dangerous.'
In the video announcement, which did not include anyone from the CDC, Makary said there was no evidence that healthy children needed to be regularly vaccinated and that other countries had stopped recommending it for children. (The World Health Organization, Australia and the U.K. currently do not recommend routine COVID vaccinations for children without underlying health conditions.)
COVID vaccines will still be recommended for children with underlying conditions. The CDC reported that between October 2022 and April 2024, 59% of the children hospitalized with COVID did have at least one underlying condition.
One of the biggest concerns raised by doctors who spoke to Yahoo News was whether the new guidance could make it harder for the groups that have been removed from the recommended list to access the vaccine.
The Affordable Care Act requires most medical insurers to cover vaccines that are recommended by the CDC without any out-of-pocket costs. But it was not immediately clear whether insurers will continue to cover the vaccine for healthy pregnant women or healthy children who still want to get it.
'There are other reasons that are legitimate for getting a vaccine as a healthy young person, but what I don't like about this is they've taken that choice out of their hands and made it virtually uninsurable,' Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the vaccine education center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, told Yahoo News. '[Vaccines] are a matter of personal choice, but [Kennedy] has taken away that choice.'
'Everyone should have the option of getting the COVID vaccine,' Dr. Molly O'Shea, a Michigan-based pediatrician and spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics, echoed this concern.
'This is a canary in a coal mine,' O'Shea told Yahoo News. 'Science has shown that not everyone is in the same risk category as everybody else when it comes to COVID anymore. But that doesn't mean that some people don't need vaccines anymore.'
Doctors like O'Shea and others also noted that the decision to stop recommending COVID vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women was made outside the normal process for vaccine guidelines. A CDC advisory panel was set to meet in June to discuss vaccine recommendations, but Kennedy's announcement preempted that conversation.
Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America, also issued a statement saying, "It is concerning that such a significant policy change was made unilaterally outside an open, evidence-based process with no regard for the negative impact this will have on millions of Americans."
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