CDC recommends parents talk to their doctor about getting their kids shots

The COVID Vaccine Recommendation: The CDC hasn’t given a lift in a week after the post on X

The department’s acceptance of the CDC’s recommendation for the use of vaccine in kids and pregnant women was withdrawn hours after the post on X, thanks to a directive from Secretary Kennedy. The directive, viewed by NPR, ordered the CDC to remove these recommendations from their vaccine schedules.

The Trump administration’s decision to remove the COVID vaccine from the list of shots it recommends for pregnant women means insurance companies may no longer cover it–so it may cost hundreds of dollars out of pocket.

The decision will make it harder for parents to get vaccinations for their children and pregnant people to get the shots. For clinicians, “shared clinical decision-making conversations are really challenging to have in a ten-minute office visit,” he says, and with a loosening of the recommendations, fewer doctors’ offices may choose to keep the vaccines on hand.

Public health experts are alarmed by how the changes were made. The Vaccine Advisory Committee is made up of a group of people from different areas, but the process is always open to the public. The data is shared publicly, as well as the discussion happening publicly, and then they come to a decision on how to recommend vaccines.

Pregnant women who contracted COVID were more likely to become severely ill and to be hospitalized than women of the same age and demographics who weren’t pregnant, especially early in the COVID pandemic.

Kennedy said that the vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule.

The recommendation raises serious concerns about the reliability of the nation’s immunization infrastructure and the federal commitment to make sure that families can access critical immunizations, whether for COVID or other infectious diseases.

But guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other researchers say being pregnant still puts you in a high-risk group that should receive boosters. There is science on the side of the shots.

The CDC recommended the COVID vaccine for healthy children and pregnant women not be included in the immunization schedule, Kennedy said on Tuesday.

Dr. Neil Silverman, a professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology, directs the Infectious Diseases in Pregnancy Program at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He sees more bad outcomes for pregnant patients with COVID. The risk of severe COVID fluctuated as new variants arose and vaccinations became available, Silverman said, but the threat is still meaningful.

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 didn’t reply when asked if they made a 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 said that pregnant women and baby can be at risk of being hit by those clots. Inflammation and blood clots in the placenta could be connected to an increased risk of stillbirth especially from certain COVID variants, according to studies published in major medical journals as well as by the CDC.

The virus that causes COVID can affect the cells that line blood vessels. In a healthy person, the endothelium helps prevent blood clots by producing chemicals that keep the vascular system running. A person who is exposed to COVID can lose the balance in their body, leading to disrupted production of the molecule that makes blood clot-inducing drugs.

When the placenta is inflamed, it’s harder for blood carrying oxygen and nutrients to get to the baby, said Mary Prahl, associate professor of pediatrics at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine.

There are signs of the effects of COVID in the baby’s body. “The placenta is nothing more than a hyper-specialized collection of blood vessels, so it is like a magnetic target for the virus.”

The connection between stillbirth and COVID may be changing because many people have developed the immunity that comes with vaccine. She’d like to see more research done in that area.

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 learned very quickly is that pregnant individuals want answers and many of them want to be involved in research,” she said. The team’s initial findings were backed up by later studies, like the one published in Nature Medicine which showed that a booster during pregnancy can cut hospital stays for newborn babies.

The Role of COVID in Vaccining, Providing for Infants, and Protecting Their Families — A Case Study at a Critical Point

She blames the delay on the scaling back of federal efforts to track COVID. A lot of the data was pulled back. The Trump administration is cutting funding to track COVID.

Getting a COVID vaccine while pregnant also helps protect newborns after birth. Pregnant women who get vaccinated pass that protection to their infants.

One in five babies hospitalized with COVID required intensive care, and one in 20 needed a ventilator.

“I don’t want to be that doctor who just says, ‘Well, it’s really important. You have to vaccinate yourself and your kids no matter what, even if you have to pay for it out of pocket,’ because everyone has their own priorities and budgetary concerns, especially in the current economic climate,” Silverman said. “I can’t tell a family that the vaccine is more important than feeding their kids.”

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