The CDC Is Cutting the Vaccine Schedule for Kids

The Trump administration is cutting the number of vaccines on the immunization schedule for children, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday. The move could further erode vaccine coverage even as cases of vaccine-preventable diseases surge nationwide.

The CDC will no longer explicitly recommend children get vaccinated for rotavirus, COVID-19, influenza, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and hepatitis B, reducing the number of diseases covered by the childhood immunization schedule from 17 to 11.

They will remain available under “shared clinical-decision making,” in which parents can elect for their children to receive the shots if their medical providers agree that they are necessary.

“By making this differentiation, making it very clear that some vaccines are very important, while there are also vaccines that also we do not need, we expect and hope that trust and uptake of the key and core vaccines will increase,” a senior administration official told reporters of the changes to the vaccine schedule.

The CDC said the decision was made by acting Director Jim O’Neill after a “scientific review of the underlying science,” according to a statement. The administration provided a report written by Tracy Beth Høeg and Martin Kulldorff, two administration officials who have questioned the efficacy and necessity of vaccines, in which they compared the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with those of other countries and determined that a reduction in trust in vaccines in the U.S. was due to what it called the “coercive measures” used by the CDC in the past by requiring them.

“It is not always possible for public health authorities to clearly define who will benefit from an immunization, who has the relevant risk factors, or who is at risk for exposure,” the CDC said in a press release. “Physicians and parents, who knows the child, are then best equipped to decide based on individual characteristics.”

The report by Høeg and Kulldorff also repeated claims, which go against scientific consensus, made by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. that vaccines have not been sufficiently studied for safety and efficacy and called for increased placebo-controlled, randomized trials on vaccines, something that experts have said is not necessary and could be unethical.

“We hope this change will help address decreased uptake of vaccines, especially the most important diseases, and increase trust in public health,” a senior administration official said.

The changes were announced during a call between senior administration officials and reporters on Monday afternoon, during which officials insisted that their remarks remain anonymous.

When explicitly asked by one reporter why senior administration officials were remaining “on background,” one senior official said they were “really here just to provide the background as to what we’re doing.”

There is no scheduled public event for the announcement.

The decision to cut the childhood immunization schedule comes after President Donald Trump signed a memorandum in December directing the Department of Health and Human Services and the CDC to review the vaccine schedules of other nations and update the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule “if they determine that superior practices exist abroad.”

Normally, changes to the childhood vaccine schedule are made by the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a committee Kennedy reformed with members of his own choosing last year. Senior administration officials said the decision by CDC officials to cut the schedule without ACIP’s input would not “sideline the important work that ACIP will continue to do.” They did not specify what work that would be.

Kennedy has often pointed to the less stringent vaccine schedules of countries like Denmark as evidence that the U.S. has too many requirements. Public health experts, however, say that other countries recommend more vaccines than Denmark, and differences between the medical systems and demographics of the two countries justify the increased vaccine requirements in the United States.

CDC will continue to recommend a selection of vaccines for all children, including the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine and the diphtheria, tetanus and acellular pertussis (dTaP) vaccine. It will move, however, to recommending only one dose of the HPV vaccine instead of two, as it previously recommended.

The CDC’s vaccine advisory committee decided to split up the measles, mumps, rubella and varicella vaccines last year — changing the recommendation to require more shots instead of combining them into one.

Other vaccines like the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine will only be recommended for children at greater risk of exposure or illness.

In a statement, the CDC said all the vaccines previously recommended would remain available through federal insurance programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Vaccines for Children Program. It is not yet known how the change could affect vaccine coverage for patients with private insurance, though some states have passed laws requiring insurers to cover vaccines as listed on previous editions of the CDC immunization schedule.

Correction: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the number of vaccines still on the schedule.