RFK Jr. scraps Covid shots for pregnant women, kids

What happened

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Tuesday said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend Covid-19 shots for "healthy children and healthy pregnant women." He announced the policy change in a social media video in which no CDC officials appeared.

Who said what

"CDC officials were not informed in advance of Kennedy's decision," The Washington Post said, citing a former agency official. Public health experts "immediately questioned" the announcement, The Associated Press said, in part because Kennedy, a "leading anti-vaccine advocate," bypassed a "scientific review process that has been in place for decades, in which experts — in public meetings — review current medical evidence and hash out" policy recommendations.

Pregnant women are "at high risk of severe illness and complications from Covid," and vaccinating them also "extends the protection to their unborn until the babies are about 6 months old," a period in which infants' risk of severe disease and hospitalization from the virus is "comparable to that among adults 65 and older," The New York Times said. Children previously vaccinated or exposed to Covid tend to have milder infections, but Kennedy "seems to have reneged on a promise" to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) "not to alter the childhood immunization schedule."

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What next?

The CDC advisory panel on vaccines was scheduled to meet and vote on new recommendations in June, but Kennedy's decision "effectively voids that official step," the Times said. His new policy "throws insurance coverage of the vaccines" into question and will likely "create confusion among pharmacists who now largely administer the shots."