The Health and Human Services department is planning to stop recommending that pregnant women, teens and children get a routine COVID-19 vaccination, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
A formal announcement is expected in the coming days, according to the report.
Current Center for Disease Control guidelines call for everyone over the age of 6 months to get vaccinated routinely. It’s not clear if new CDC guidelines will call for the end of COVID vaccinations for those groups altogether, according to the report.
It was reported last month that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was considering a directive to rescind the COVID-19 vaccine from the federal government's list of recommended immunizations for children.
The move would bring the U.S. in line with the World Health Organization, which does not routinely recommend annual COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children or healthy adults. Further, studies have shown that children are unlikely to become severely ill or die from COVID.
The topic of COVID vaccinations for children came up several times during Kennedy's confirmation hearings in January.
"COVID vaccines are inappropriate for 6-year-old children who basically have a zero risk of COVID," Kennedy said at one point.
According to recent CDC data, just 13% of children received the latest COVID shot. No states mandate the COVID vaccine and, in fact, 22 states enacted a ban on student COVID vaccine mandates.
Thursday's report comes the same day that the Food and Drug Administration said that it is mulling a new framework for vaccine approvals next week. FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary said the agency may require more data from companies and require placebo testing on new vaccines, according to the report.
The FDA early last month delayed full approval for Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine. The shot is available for emergency use but FDA approval would make the vaccine, which does not use messenger-RNA technology, more widely available.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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