The CDC recommends that parents talk to a doctor about their children getting COVID-19 shots
The CDC’s Recommendation for the Use of COVID Shots During Pregnant Women Isn’t Good
The department’s acceptance of the CDC’s recommendations for the use of COVID shots in children and during pregnancy was scrapped Hours after the post on X, the CDC’s staffers received a directive from Secretary Kennedy, but he wasn’t the one who wrote it. The CDC was told to remove the recommendations from their vaccine schedules.
The Trump administration’s decision to not recommend the COVID vaccine to pregnant women is likely to cost them hundreds of dollars out of pocket, because insurers may no longer cover it.
The decision will make it much harder for parents to get their children vaccinated and for pregnant people to get the shots, O’Leary says. He says that a ten-minute office visit is difficult for clinicians, with a loosened of the recommendations, fewer doctors will choose to keep the vaccines on hand.
Public health experts are alarmed by how the changes were made. Typically, “it’s a very transparent public process,” says Dr. Sean O’Leary, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, who represents the AAP as a liaison to the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. “The data are shared publicly, the discussion happens publicly and then they come to a decision on how to recommend vaccines.”
Now, the CDC’s vaccine schedule recommends COVID vaccines for children through shared clinical decision-making — that is, if a doctor and a patient decide together that it makes sense. The vaccine recommendation for pregnant women is not good.
“I couldn’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” Kennedy said in the video, “We’re now one step closer to realizing President Trump’s promise to make America healthy again.”
“However, the deeply flawed process to reach the recommendation raises serious concerns about the stability of the nation’s immunization infrastructure and commitment by federal leaders to make sure families can access critical immunizations, whether for COVID or other infectious diseases,” Kressly said.
There is no reason for a pregnant woman to end up in the hospital if she gets the vaccine, since it gives her a boost in her immune system.
Kennedy said that the CDC has decided to no longer recommend the vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women.
Neil Silverman, a professor at the David geffen school of medicine, directs the infectious diseases in pregnancy program. He said he sees more bad outcomes for pregnant patients that have COVID. The threat of severe COVID is still relevant, even though new versions of the disease became available and vaccinations became available.
A request for comment regarding the scientific literature that supports COVID vaccination for pregnant women sent to HHS’s Public Affairs office elicited an unsigned email unrelated to the question. The office did not respond when asked for an on-the-record comment.
“There is natural immune suppression so that the mother’s body doesn’t attack the developing fetus,” Rasmussen said. “While the mother does still have a functioning immune system, it’s not functioning at full capacity,” she added.
Permar believes that those clots can be fatal to the pregnant women and baby. Studies published in major medical journals as well as the CDC suggest that inflammation and blood clot in the uterus may be related to an increased risk of stillbirth.
The virus that causes COVID can affect the vascular endothelium – specialized cells that line blood vessels and help with blood flow, Rasmussen said. The endothelium helps prevent blood clot by making chemicals that keep the cardiovascular system running. In a person infected with COVID, the balance is thrown off and the production of those molecules is disrupted, which research shows can lead to blood clots or other blood disorders.
She said that if the functions are disrupted, it will affect the way the fetus grows and develops.
It makes sense that we see the effects of COVID in the placenta, Silverman said. “In order for the virus to be successful, it needs a collection of blood vessels that are extremely sensitive to magnetic fields.”
Prahl said the connection between stillbirth and COVID may be changing given the immunity many people have developed from vaccination or prior infection. It’s an area in which she’d like to see more research.
Prahl co-authored a small, early study that found no adverse outcomes and showed antibody protection persisted for both the mother and the baby after birth. “What we discovered was that pregnant individuals want answers and many of them want to be involved in research,” she said. Later studies, including one published in the journal Nature Medicine showing that getting a booster in pregnancy cut newborn hospitalizations in the first four months of life, backed up her team’s early findings.
The Biden Administration’s Failure to Track COVID and How to Prevent a Child’s Epidemic in the United States
She says the delay is due to the Biden administration scaling back federal efforts to track COVID. She said that a lot of the data was pulled back. The administration is cutting money to find vagrants.
“Newborns will be completely naïve to COVID exposure,” he said. There is still a valid reason to keep trying to get pregnant women to avoid giving birth.
Excluding newborns hospitalized at birth, about 1 in 5 infants hospitalized with COVID required intensive care, and nearly one in 20 required a ventilator.
“I don’t want to be that doctor who just says, ‘Well, it’s really important. You have to have a vaccine for yourself and your kids even if it’s not free, because everyone has their own priorities and budget concerns in the current economic climate. I cannot tell a family that the vaccine is important over feeding their kids.
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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed COVID-19 vaccine from its recommended schedule for children and pregnant women. “I can’t be more pleased to announce that as of today the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule,” CDC Director Tom Kennedy said in a video.