The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer will recommend COVID-19 shots for healthy pregnant women and healthy children, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday.
The CDC currently recommends everyone older than 6 months receive a COVID-19 shot each year, and has said pregnant people are at increased risk for serious COVID infections and pregnancy complications.
Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic, announced the change in a video posted to X that also included remarks from National Institutes of Health Commissioner Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary.
"Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children," Kennedy said.
"That ends today," Bhattacharya added. "It's common sense, and it's good science."
Makary said most countries have stopped recommending COVID vaccines for children, saying there's "no evidence healthy kids need it."
The shift oversteps the United States' traditional process for vaccine recommendations. After vaccines are authorized by the Food and Drug Administration, a CDC advisory panel of independent experts recommends who should receive it, at what age, and how often. Once the CDC director signs off, insurers are mandated to fully cover the vaccines.
This development also follows news last week that COVID shots only will be available to adults 65 and older and to people 6 months and older with at least one qualifying medical condition. More robust research, in the form of clinical trials, is needed before making the vaccines available to healthy people, FDA officials said.
Kennedy has long taken aim at vaccines and the mRNA technology used to develop the COVID shots. Kennedy falsely claimed in 2021 that the COVID vaccine was the "deadliest vaccine ever made." He also filed a citizen's petition that year requesting the FDA to revoke its authorization for the COVID vaccine and to stop producing the shots in the future.
"We still have children in our emergency department with COVID," Dr. Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania, told NBC News. "When we see them, they have bronchiolitis or bronchitis. Do they consider that not worthy of prevention?"
People who get COVID while pregnant are more likely to get seriously ill because of changes to the immune system, heart and lungs, according to the Cleveland Clinic. Research also has shown that COVID infection during pregnancy may lead to preterm birth and other complications.