The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has updated the childhood immunization schedule to recommend 10, rather than 17, shots for children.<\/p>\n
Trump signed a directive on Dec. 5 ordering the agency to examine best practices from \u201cpeer, developed nations\u201d on their childhood vaccination<\/a> schedules. Following the review, HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O\u2019Neill signed a memorandum updating the U.S. schedule on Monday.<\/p>\n The new schedule varies from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s child and adolescent schedule which was updated at the end of 2024, recommending 17 immunizations<\/a> for all children.<\/p>\n A senior HHS official told reporters on a press call that the action doesn\u2019t remove vaccines from availability. <\/p>\n \u201cNo vaccine is being banned or removed,\u201d the offiical said. \u201cEvery vaccine currently recommended by the CDC remains available, fully covered by insurance, without cost sharing. No family will lose access to vaccines.\u201d<\/p>\n HHS\u2019 review found that the United States was a high outlier in terms of the vaccines it recommended to children<\/a>, an official said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe recommend more than any of the 20 peer nations that we assessed in this report,\u201d a senior HHS official said. <\/p>\n \u201cAnd so we identified the vaccines that were consensus vaccines among essentially all countries to focus on for our recommendations for all children in the United States, and we considered whether or not there were specific epidemiological reasons that the United States should diverge from those, from those vaccines that are consensus vaccines among our peer nations, and we did add varicella to the to the list of vaccinations.\u201d<\/p>\n The new order groups vaccines<\/a> in the children\u2019s immunization schedule into three categories: immunizations recommended for all children, immunizations recommended for certain high-risk groups or populations, and immunizations based on shared clinical decision making for all children.<\/p>\n The CDC will continue to recommend vaccines that protect against most serious childhood diseases, including measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, pneumococcal disease, HPV, and varicella, according to an HHS official.<\/p>\n The updated schedule allows parents \u201cflexibility and choice\u201d in their child\u2019s vaccination decisions<\/a>, according to a fact sheet provided by HHS.<\/p>\n \u201cThe anticipated benefit of the change is that it will restore the public trust in the vaccination schedule that children that parents have, and will allow the U.S. to align better with how our peer nations are managing the real risk to children from childhood infectious disease,\u201d a senior HHS official said. <\/p>\n