The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday an unprecedented overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule that recommends fewer shots to all children.<\/p>\n
Under the change \u2014 effective immediately \u2014 the vaccine schedule will more closely resemble Denmark\u2019s, recommending all children get vaccines for 11 diseases, compared with the 18 previously on the schedule.<\/p>\n
Senior Health and Human Services officials said the changes are meant to restore trust in public health that spilled over from the Covid pandemic. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe loss of trust during the pandemic not only affected the COVID-19 vaccine uptake. It also contributed to less adherence to the full CDC childhood immunization schedule, with lower rates of consensus vaccines such as measles, rubella, pertussis, and polio,\u201d reads the scientific assessment the agency based its decision on. <\/p>\n
The assessment said \u201cthere is a need for more and better science\u201d on vaccines \u2014 though the new schedule does not say there are specific vaccines children should not get.<\/p>\n
In practice, not much will change for parents who want their children to continue to get all of the vaccines previously recommended. Insurance will continue to cover the shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best case scenario is that nothing will change,\u201d said Dr. David Margolius, the director of public health for the city of Cleveland. \u201cThe worst case scenario is that this causes more confusion, more distrust, lower vaccination rates, and then just this trend of political parties and ideologies determining which vaccines people should get.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no \u201crigor or reason\u201d to reduce the number of shots just because another country did it, Margolius said. \u201cIt just doesn\u2019t make sense.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Denmark, vaccines for the flu, Covid, RSV, chickenpox, hepatitis A, rotavirus and meningitis are not included in the childhood schedule. Denmark also recommends some shots \u2014 including polio, diphtheria, tetanus and whooping cough \u2014 on a slightly different timeline than the U.S. <\/p>\n
The CDC said it will continue to recommend that all children get vaccines for measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcal disease, HPV and chickenpox. <\/p>\n
Other vaccines, however, will be recommended for \u201chigh-risk groups\u201d or recommended based on so-called shared clinical decision-making. Vaccines recommended for high-risk groups are shots for RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue and two types of bacterial meningitis.<\/p>\n
The vaccines recommended based on shared clinical decision-making are for rotavirus, Covid, the flu, hepatitis A, hepatitis B and bacterial meningitis.<\/p>\n
A senior HHS official said that all vaccines recommended as of the end of 2025 \u2014 before this schedule change went into place \u2014 will remain available and covered by Affordable Care Act plans and federal insurance plans, including Medicaid, the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program and the Vaccines for Children program.<\/p>\n
The childhood vaccine schedule is a set of recommendations on the timing of vaccinations. It\u2019s not a mandate, but is used to guide what vaccines are covered by insurance and are needed to attend daycare and public schools. States determine which vaccines are required for school attendance and have historically relied on the CDC schedule. It\u2019s usually reviewed annually by the CDC\u2019s vaccine advisory panel and updated based on the latest scientific evidence.<\/p>\n
Public health experts and major medical organizations warn against the change. <\/p>\n
Some public figures \u201chave claimed that the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule is unsafe or unnecessary because the United States recommends more routine vaccines than some countries, like Denmark,\u201d the American Academy of Pediatrics says on its website<\/a>. \u201cThe truth is that while vaccine guidance is largely similar across developed countries, it may differ by country due to different disease threats, population demographics, health systems, costs, government structures, vaccine availability, and programs for vaccine delivery.\u201d <\/p>\n Why Denmark?<\/p>\n Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an anti-vaccine activist, has said he believes children in the U.S. receive too many vaccines, falsely saying on multiple occasions that kids get as many as 90 doses before age 18. As health secretary, he has moved to limit vaccines for kids, including removing a recommendation for the Covid shot. Last month, the CDC rolled back a decades-long recommendation<\/a> that all newborns get their first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine within 24 hours \u2014 a move experts said could lead to a resurgence of infections.<\/p>\n In December, Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the acting director of the Food and Drug Administration\u2019s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research who has been critical of the Covid shot, gave a presentation on the Danish vaccine schedule during a CDC vaccine advisory committee meeting<\/a>. <\/p>\n The presentation by Hoeg \u2014 who holds dual citizenship in the U.S. and Denmark<\/a> \u2014 suggested fewer vaccines may reduce children\u2019s exposure to aluminum, an ingredient used in shots to boost the immune response and a target of anti-vaccine groups. A major study from Denmark, published in July<\/a>, found that aluminum exposure from vaccines is not harmful. Kennedy demanded the journal retract the study<\/a>, calling it \u201ca deceitful propaganda stunt by the pharmaceutical industry;\u201d the journal did not issue a retraction.<\/p>\n Shortly after the meeting ended, President Donald Trump directed health officials<\/a> to review U.S. childhood vaccination<\/a> recommendations and align them with the \u201cbest practices\u201d from other developed countries \u2014 including Denmark.<\/p>\n Anders Peter Hviid, the senior author of the Danish study on aluminum in vaccines and a professor in the department of epidemiology research at Statens Serum Institut in Denmark \u2014 that country\u2019s equivalent of the CDC \u2014 wrote in an email in December that Denmark has a more homogeneous population than the U.S., with greater trust in public health institutions, universal and free health care and lower rates of serious outcomes from infectious diseases that it doesn\u2019t vaccinate against but the U.S. does. <\/p>\n Denmark\u2019s robust public health system, for example, makes it much easier for the country to test pregnant women for hepatitis B and ensure that babies born to women test positive are vaccinated against the disease. A similar approach, now endorsed by the CDC, had not been successful in the U.S. at cutting infection rates in children. <\/p>\n Denmark\u2019s vaccination schedule is not set in stone, however. Meeting summaries from the Danish Vaccine Council \u2014 an expert panel that advises Denmark on vaccine recommendations \u2014 from November of last year suggest growing interest in reassessing rotavirus, chickenpox and hepatitis B vaccinations. <\/p>\n In October, the Danish government began recommending RSV vaccination for pregnant women. The vaccine council is also considering the RSV antibody shot for infants. The shot was approved in the European Union in 2022. <\/p>\n Hviid said under the proposed changes, outbreaks for disease currently rare in the U.S. \u201cwill only get worse.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDerecommending will likely lead to lower uptake,\u201d he said, \u201cleaving more children exposed to infectious disease, both among those that choose not to get vaccinated and those too young or in vulnerable populations that depend on indirect protection through herd immunity.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced Monday an unprecedented overhaul of the childhood vaccine schedule that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-389757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}