By Sarah Owermohle, NCS
(NCS) — The US Department of Health and Human Services will recommend fewer vaccines for many American kids, well being officers stated Monday.
Health officers will proceed to recommend the measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and immunizations in opposition to polio, chickenpox, HPV and others, however they will slim suggestions for vaccination in opposition to respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV; meningococcal illness; hepatitis B; and hepatitis A to kids who’re broadly at larger danger for infections.
They will recommend that choices on vaccinations in opposition to flu, Covid-19 and rotavirus be based mostly on “shared clinical decision-making,” which suggests individuals who need one should seek the advice of with a well being care supplier.
The proposed modifications come amid a sharp increase in flu cases throughout the nation. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported 9 pediatric deaths from flu this season.
HHS stated that each one insurers will nonetheless cowl these vaccines with out cost-sharing. However, the modifications might current new hurdles for fogeys who want to seek the advice of with medical doctors about immunizations not advisable for wholesome kids.
‘Public health is not one size fits all’
The new US schedule of childhood vaccines extra carefully resembles that of different developed nations equivalent to Denmark, as NCS reported last month.
Denmark doesn’t at the moment recommend childhood vaccinations in opposition to rotavirus, hepatitis A, meningococcal, flu, chickenpox or RSV.
US well being officers initially deliberate to announce the modifications in December, weeks after Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, newly named appearing director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, gave a presentation on the Danish vaccine schedule to the CDC’s panel of vaccine advisers.
The panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunizations Practices, was reconstituted final yr with a brand new group of members after US Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime anti-vaccine skeptic, dismissed all earlier appointees.
The overhaul comes one month after President Donald Trump ordered the well being division to evaluation the childhood vaccine schedule.
“It is ridiculous!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social submit in December, after his government order. “That is why I have just signed a Presidential memorandum directing the Department of Health and Human Services to ‘FAST TRACK’ a comprehensive evaluation of Vaccine Schedules from other Countries around the World, and better align the U.S. Vaccine Schedule.”
In a submit on X, Kennedy responded: “Thank you, Mr. President. We’re on it.”
Several public well being consultants warned that the modifications might gas outbreaks of preventable illnesses.
“I think that a reduced schedule is going to endanger children and lay the groundwork for a resurgence in preventable disease,” stated Dr. Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist and director of the Center for Outbreak Response Innovation on the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Denmark will not be an excellent blueprint for US vaccine coverage, stated Anders Hviid, who leads vaccine security and effectiveness analysis on the Statens Serum Institut in Denmark.
They’re “two very different countries. Public health is not one size fits all,” he instructed NCS in an e mail.
In Denmark, “everyone has access to excellent prenatal and childhood care. As I understand it, that is not the case for everyone in the US. Vaccines prevent infections that may have poor outcomes for children who do not have access to good healthcare.”
Faltering data
HHS in an announcement stated that lowering the variety of advisable vaccines would assist restore public belief in well being companies — and probably confidence in vaccines themselves. The company reasoned that regardless of recommending extra shots, the US doesn’t have larger vaccination charges than peer international locations that depend on “education rather than mandates.”
The authorities’s vaccine outreach and messaging has been vastly reshaped underneath Kennedy, who has questioned vaccine security for many years.
It is a “confusing time” for medical doctors and fogeys, Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the American Association of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, stated Monday.
“What was announced today is part of a decades-long effort on the part of the health secretary to spread fear and falsehoods about vaccines, and this is another step in the secretary’s effort to dismantle the US vaccination system,” O’Leary stated.
At the identical time, public details about vaccination charges is faltering.
Last week, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services dropped necessities for states to report childhood vaccination standing for beneficiaries, a transfer that consultants say could increase pointless doubts concerning the significance of vaccines. CMS despatched a letter to state well being officers on December 30 stating that vaccination knowledge not wants to be submitted to the company that oversees Medicaid and Medicare.
“This is another message that could create doubt in people’s minds about the need for vaccines, and that isn’t something that’s supported by current science,” stated Dr. Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician and chief medical officer of the Association of Immunization Managers.
The CMS requirement for reporting childhood immunization standing was comparatively new — it was carried out in 2024 — and there are different federal programs to monitor immunization charges. But greater than 40% of youngsters within the US are coated by Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, and immunization surveillance gives necessary insights.
CMS stated it plans to “explore options to facilitate the development of new vaccine measures” after dropping this requirement. These new measures could embody monitoring how usually dad and mom are knowledgeable about vaccine security and unwanted side effects and various vaccine schedules, in addition to how to seize “preferences related to vaccines” and the way non secular exemptions could also be accounted for.
States could proceed to voluntarily report childhood vaccination knowledge to CMS, however Fiscus says which will rely upon the political get together of native leaders.
“I think this is going to contribute to this schism between states based on their party of government,” she stated. “We’ll see more of this patchwork of state policies around immunizations, and that’s unfortunate, because these diseases don’t really care about state borders so much.”
The-NCS-Wire
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NCS’s Deidre McPhillips, Adam Cancryn, Brenda Goodman, Jen Christensen and Nadia Kounang contributed to this report.