A Public Discussion on CDC Recommendations for the Use of COVID Shots in Children and During Pregnancies

Hours after the post on X, CDC staffers received a directive from Secretary Kennedy — dated May 19, but sent May 27 — rescinding the department’s 2022 acceptance of the CDC’s recommendations for the use of COVID shots in children and during pregnancy. The directive, viewed by NPR, ordered the CDC to remove these recommendations from their vaccine schedules.

Some insurance companies may no longer pay for them, says Richard Hughes, a former executive at the vaccine company Moderna, who now teaches healthcare law and policy at George Washington University. “Expect variability in coverage, prior authorization and out-of-pocket [costs], all of which will discourage uptake,” he says.

O’Leary says the decision will make it much harder for parents to get their children immunised and pregnant people to do so. Sharing clinical decision-making conversations in a ten minute office visit is difficult for clinicians, and with a loosened of the guidelines fewer doctors’ offices may choose to keep the vaccines on hand.

Public health experts are alarmed by the way the changes were made. It’s typically a very transparent public process according to Sean O’Leary, a professor of medicine and of pediatrics at the University of Colorado School of Medicine who is a liaison to the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. The data is shared and the discussion takes place publicly, they make a decision on how to recommend vaccines.

The vaccine schedule recommends COVID vaccines for children using shared clinical decision-making, if a doctor and patient decide together it makes sense. And there’s no recommendation for pregnant women to get COVID vaccines.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services removed the vaccine from the list of vaccinations you should get.

“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.

The CDC and other researchers tell pregnant people that they should get boosters because they are in a high-risk group. The science is on the side of the shots.

“I can’t be more excited to announce that the COVID vaccine for children and pregnant women have been removed from the CDC recommended immunizations schedule” Kennedy said.

The Effect of COVID on the Structural Endothelium of Pregnant Women: A Public Affairs Office Comment

“When it comes to science, we know that patients are more likely to get injured if they’re pregnant, no matter what the politics are like,” she said.

The HHS’s Public Affairs office received a request for comment regarding the scientific literature that supports the COVID vaccine for pregnant women, and an email was not related 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.

Being pregnant changes the immune system and makes women more likely to have blood clot. That risk is increased if they contract COVID said Sallie Permar, Chair of Pediatrics at Weill Cornell Medicine.

The virus that causes COVID can affect the vascular endothelium – specialized cells that line blood vessels and help with blood flow, Rasmussen said. In a healthy person, the endothelium helps prevent blood clots by producing chemicals that keep the vascular 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.

“If anything is interrupting those functions – inflammation or clotting or differences in how the blood is flowing – that’s really going to affect how the placenta is working and being able to allow the fetus to grow and develop appropriately,” she said.

It makes sense that COVID effects the baby’s growth in the uterus. The placenta is a highly specialized collection of blood vessels, making it a target for the virus.

Many people have developed immunity to infections and that could be changing the connection between stillbirth and COVID. She’d like to see more research in that area.

The study found no adverse outcomes for the mother and the baby, as well as showing that the mother’s immunity persisted after she gave birth. “What we learned very quickly is 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.

Source: Here’s the science behind the COVID vaccine in pregnancy

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She blames the delay in part on the Biden administration’s scaling back of federal efforts to track COVID. “A lot of the surveillance of these data were pulled back,” she said. Money used to track COvid is being cut by the Trump administration.

Newborns who are protected after birth with a COVID vaccine are also pregnant. Pregnant women who get vaccinated pass that protection to their infants.

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 is important.’ Everyone has their own priorities and budget concerns in the current economic climate, so no matter what, you have to have your kids vaccine, even if it isn’t free. I can’t tell a family that the vaccine is important over feeding their kids.

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