- The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will no longer recommend routine COVID-19 vaccination of pregnant women, adolescents, and children
- The decision is based on information from sources familiar with the matter
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is weighing ending routine COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children, teens, and pregnant women, the Wall Street Journal reported, based on sources with knowledge of the issue.
Now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), under the authority of HHS, recommend new COVID-19 vaccines for all those six months and older regardless of their prior vaccinations. It is unclear if the HHS will entirely exclude recommending the vaccines to these populations or recommend only that people contact their physicians to perform risk and benefit assessments, the report added.
As of April 26, 14 percent of pregnant women and 13 percent of children had gotten the new COVID vaccine, according to CDC data. Three COVID vaccines now available in the United States are Moderna's and Pfizer-BioNTech's mRNA-based vaccines, and Novavax's protein-based vaccine.
Moderna and Novavax did not respond, and HHS and Pfizer didn't immediately return requests for comment to Reuters. HHS is now headed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken vaccine critic for years. FDA commissioner Martin Makary has also criticized numerous pandemic public health initiatives and spoken about vaccine mandates for everyone.
Novavax is trying to resolve outstanding matters with the FDA since the agency failed to meet its April 1 deadline for approving the company's vaccine. Beyond potential CDC vaccine guideline modifications, the FDA also will roll out next week a new system for approving vaccines, the Wall Street Journal said.
This comes after massive HHS layoffs, including top scientists, as part of department-wide restructuring under Kennedy. The reforms have been attacked as likely to cause delays in the review process of treatments and vaccines by the regulators.
