Changes to COVID vaccine immunization schedule met with some concern from some in the Colorado medical community

CBS News

28-05-2025

Word came out Tuesday from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that the HHS will no longer recommend that healthy children and healthy pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccine. It means removing it from the recommended immunization schedule. The recommendation effectively cut in front of the agency's outside advisors who make up the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. They typically make recommendations first.
Kennedy and the heads of the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health called it good science. But among experts the move was met with some concern.
"I think there's some really concerning dimensions to that," said Denver Health Pulmonary and Critical Care physician Dr. Anuj Mehta.
"For kids and for pregnant women it's important to think about conversations with your health care provider about what's safe, what's effective and more importantly what's going to prevent potential long term consequences. I think COVID vaccines repeatedly have shown to be an incredibly safe option for adults, kids and pregnant women."
He pointed out that his own children get boosters and that if his wife were pregnant, they would talk about updating a vaccination for her.
"That's the thing that's going to put the baby at greater risk is getting a severe COVID infection, more so than the vaccines at any time."
The FDA has recently said that pregnancy is an underlying condition that warrants continued eligibility for COVID vaccine approvals.
Research published in the National Library of Medicine authored by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as well the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and other experts from around the world looked at reports of problems after more than a million vaccinations and indicated no safety concerns for mRNA-based vaccines.
In the practice of pediatrician Dr. Michael Milobsky, he has set a policy that parents cannot opt children out of several primary vaccines. He has a great population of children in his practice with severe medical issues. Many came through NICU as babies and have very serious medical issues that they deal with. So other children are required to have pertussis, whooping cough, polio and MMR as well as the varicella (chicken pox) vaccines.
But not COVID.
During last flu season, the problem was not COVID-19.
"I can't name one kid off the top of my head that I remember that I actually had go to the ER or to the hospital due to a COVID infection compared to the dozens and dozens every week almost the height of it that had to go because of RSV or flu," said Milobsky.
So for healthy children, vaccinating against COVID is not a requirement to remain with the practice as a patient.
His recommendations on vaccination are different for children in the practice who have medical conditions that put them at greater risk from COVID.
"When I'm talking about a child who is at risk because of prematurity or chronic lung disease or obesity or metabolic disorders or diabetes or neurologic disorders or cardiac disorders, I aggressively advise them to get the COVID vaccine."
For Milobsky, it is about finding balance in the need for the vaccination.
"There's a truth in the middle that is the actual truth and people on the extreme are, well there's no need for it, or everybody needs it. Both of those things are not technically correct."