By Mike Stobbe, Associated Press
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has adopted recommendations by a new group of vaccine advisers, and stopped recommending COVID-19 shots for anyone — leaving the choice up to patients.
The government health agency on Monday[October 6] announced it has adopted recommendations made last month by advisers picked by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Before this year, U.S. health officials — following recommendations by infectious disease experts — recommended annual COVID-19 boosters for all Americans ages 6 months and older. The idea was to update protection against the coronavirus as it continues to evolve.
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 them with a handpicked group.
The new group voted last month to say all Americans should make their own decisions. But the CDC also says vaccine decisions, especially for seniors, should involve checking with a doctor, nurse or pharmacist.
The recommendation was endorsed by Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services Jim O’Neill, who is serving as the CDC’s acting director. O’Neill signed off on it last week, but HHS officials announced it Monday [October 6].
In a statement Monday[October 6], O’Neill celebrated the change, saying past guidance “deterred health care providers from talking about the risks and benefits of vaccination.”
“Informed consent is back,” O’Neill said in a statement some doctors objected to.
Doctors routinely discuss vaccines with patients and parents, and share printed information about the risks and benefits of each shot, said Dr. Jesse Hackell, a retired New York physician who has coauthored several American Academy of Pediatrics policy statements on vaccinations.
“To make a statement that informed consent is back implies that it had gone away. In no way has it gone away,” he said.
Major medical societies continue to recommend shots for younger children, pregnant women and others at higher risk of severe illness. They say the Trump administration’s discussion of risk overemphasizes rare side effects and doesn’t account for the dangers of coronavirus infection itself.
The decision clears the government’s Vaccines for Children program to ship COVID-19 vaccine doses. The program provides routine vaccinations at no cost to children whose families qualify.
