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As Subvariant Spreads, CDC Maintains Child Vaccine Guidance Despite RFK Announcement
Experts said the new guidance would likely prevent insurers from refusing to cover the vaccines, but some said mixed messages from the Trump administration could still lead to confusion.
May 30, 2025
Amid reports of a new Covid-19 subvariant spreading in several U.S. states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday said updated guidance on receiving vaccines against the coronavirus that contradicted a controversial recent announcement from the nation's top health official.
The CDC's schedule for vaccines for children aged 6 months to 17 years retained the Covid-19 shot, advising parents and doctors to engage in "shared clinical decision-making" when determining if a child should be vaccinated—meaning children can receive the shots if their parents and physicians agree.
That guidance contradicts a statement from Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. earlier this week. Kennedy claimed Tuesday that there was a "lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children" for Covid vaccines as he announced, alongside National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary, that the shots would no longer be recommended for pregnant women or healthy children.
"Where the parent presents with a desire for their child to be vaccinated, children six months and older may receive Covid-19 vaccination, informed by the clinical judgment of a healthcare provider and personal preference and circumstances," the new guidelines read.
"At least how some clinicians perceive it is, 'You guys are the experts, and if you don't know what the right thing to do is, how are we supposed to have that conversation in a 10-minute office visit?'"
Kennedy's announcement earlier this week alarmed public health experts, as did an earlier statement that the vaccines would only be made available to people over age 65 and those with certain medical conditions.
Kennedy, who baselessly called the Covid-19 vaccine "the deadliest ever made" in 2021—when the shots were estimated to have saved 140,000 lives—said at the time that new clinical trials would be needed to see if the vaccines continued to provide protection to people under 65.
Sean O'Leary, the chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics' infectious disease committee, said the CDC's new guidance could still cause confusion among parents and doctors, compared to an across-the-board recommendation like those that exist for other childhood vaccines.
"At least how some clinicians perceive it is, 'You guys are the experts, and if you don't know what the right thing to do is, how are we supposed to have that conversation in a 10-minute office visit?'" O'Leary told The Washington Post.
But the new guidance could stop insurance companies from refusing to cover the shots, as experts were worried they might after Kennedy's earlier statements, and will preserve the shots' availability for about 38 million low-income children who rely on the Vaccines for Children program.
The out-of-pocket cost for a Covid vaccine at a CVS pharmacy—where some patients could opt to go if their doctors don't want to administer the vaccine—is $198.99.
Experts remained concerned on Friday about the CDC's approach to Covid vaccines for pregnant women; the agency said there is officially "no guidance" for people who are pregnant.
Public health experts have warned that research shows pregnant women's risk of death and hospitalization is heightened if they have a Covid infection, and that the illness raises the risk of stillbirth.
The CDC's new guidance—and Kennedy's push to pivot away from Covid vaccines for the general population—come as a new, highly transmissible Covid subvariant has been detected in states including California, Rhode Island, New York, and Washington.
The subvariant, NB.1.8.1, was first detected in January and has been spreading in Europe and Asia since then, with the World Health Organization saying there has been a "concurrent increase in cases and hospitalizations in some countries where NB.1.8.1 is widespread."
Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, an infectious disease expert at Stanford University, told The Los Angeles Times that NB.1.8.1 does not cause more severe illness, "but it is more transmissible, at least from what we’re seeing around the world and also from lab experiments."
Meanwhile, Kennedy's push to reduce the availability of vaccines is "kind of chilling," Dr. Peter Chin-Hong of the University of California, San Francisco, told the Times. "It's out of step with the system we've learned to trust and follow... Most people would agree that kids should be targeted for flu vaccines. It seems kind of weird to have Covid as an outlier in that respect."
O'Leary said in a statement that despite the Trump administration's recent statements, scientific data about the vaccines is clear.
"Pregnant women, infants, and young children are at higher risk of hospitalization from Covid," he said, "and the safety of the Covid vaccine has been widely demonstrated."
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RFK Says US Will No Longer Recommend Covid Shot for Healthy Children and Pregnant People
"With Covid still circulating, pregnant women and their babies who are born too young to be vaccinated are going to be at risk for Covid and for the severe complications," said one doctor.
May 27, 2025
U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will cease recommending the Covid-19 vaccine for "healthy children and healthy pregnant women."
As of Tuesday, Covid vaccines for those two groups are no longer a part of the CDC recommended immunization schedule, said Kennedy in a video posted to X. In the video, Kennedy stood between National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Jay Bhattacharya and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Martin Makary.
"We're now one step closer to realizing President [Donald] Trump's promise to make America healthy again," said Kennedy, who has a history of disparaging vaccines and once falsely called the Covid jab the "deadliest vaccine ever made."
"Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another Covid shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children," said Kennedy.
Bhattacharya added: "That ends today. It's common sense and it's good science."
Until the announcement, the CDC had recommended everyone 6 months old and older, including pregnant people, get the vaccine.
According to The Washington Post, the move sidestepped traditional protocol. After a vaccine has the green light from the FDA, it goes to a CDC panel called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices for consideration. That panel then holds hearings to determine who should receive the vaccine, how frequently they should receive it, and when, per the Post. The panel sends it recommendation to the CDC director, who can decide to sign off on it, at which point it becomes official policy.
Information that is still currently on the CDC's website states that pregnant people are at heightened risk if they contract Covid-19.
"If you are pregnant or were recently pregnant, you are more likely to get very sick from Covid-19, compared to those who are not pregnant. Additionally, if you have Covid-19 during pregnancy, you are at increased risk of complications that can affect your pregnancy and your baby from serious illness from Covid-19," the webpage states.
Dr. Denise Jamieson, an adviser to the CDC on vaccines who also serves on the immunization committee of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, also told the New York Times on Tuesday that pregnant people are at heightened risk of becoming severely sickened with Covid.
"With Covid still circulating, pregnant women and their babies who are born too young to be vaccinated are going to be at risk for Covid and for the severe complications," Jamieson told the outlet.
Today RFK and co. removed the COVID vaccine from the CDC's recommended immunization schedule for children and pregnant people. This is junk science. COVID puts children and pregnant people at higher risk for ER visits and hospitalizations, and Long COVID can cause chronic health issues for anyone.
[image or embed]
— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran.com) May 27, 2025 at 12:06 PM
The Times' coverage pointed out that the video did not make it clear whether the vaccine will be offered to children who have never had it before, or whether the states will still be allowed recommend Covid shots.
When it comes to children, Dr. Sean O'Leary, a vaccine expert for the American Academy of Pediatrics, recently told the Times that the hospitalization risk for children who are 6 months old and younger is about the same as the risks faced by people who are ages 65-74, and there is also increased risk of hospitalization for kids up to the age of 2.
Writing on Bluesky, New York Times health journalist Maggie Astor on Tuesday called the move "a huge step" that is "at odds with science showing significant risks for young children and pregnant women—and that directly contradicts the FDA's own publication from last week listing pregnancy as a high-risk condition that would qualify people for this fall's Covid vaccine."
Last week, the FDA announced a plan to restrict access of Covid-19 vaccines. Vinay Prasad, head of the agency's vaccine division, and Makary, the commissioner, wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine that the vaccine "booster" doses that have been available for the last several years to anyone aged 6 months and older carry "uncertain" benefits for much of the population. The officials said they anticipate the next round of shots will be available only for adults over 65 and those with certain medical conditions.
In the article in the New England Journal of Medicine, pregnancy is listed as a risk factor that would make them eligible to receive a vaccine under the new plan.
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Trump-GOP Cuts Could Reverse Last Year's Historic Drop in Drug Overdose Deaths, Warn Experts
Cuts to Medicaid and prevention, harm reduction, and treatment programs "will equal more people dying," said one public health expert.
May 15, 2025
Federal public health officials on Thursday announced an unprecedented drop last year in drug overdose deaths, which have plagued the United States for decades and had been rising steadily over the past several years.
But experts warned that now is exactly the wrong time to "take our foot off the gas pedal," as the Republican Party and President Donald Trump are threatening to do with steep cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that an estimated 80,391 people in the U.S. died of drug overdoses in 2024—a 27% drop, with about 30,000 fewer deaths than in 2023 and "more than 81 lives saved every day."
Synthetic opioids like fentanyl were still involved in most overdose deaths last year, but those deaths were down 37% between 2023-24.
"I would characterize this as a historically significant decrease in overdose deaths," Brandon Marshall, a Brown University School of Public Health epidemiologist, toldThe Washington Post. "We're really seeing decreases almost across the entire nation at this point."
Experts noted that numerous factors are likely behind the plunging fatal overdose numbers. The CDC said it has been able to strengthen overdose prevention capacities across the U.S. since Trump declared the opioid crisis a public health emergency in 2017 during his first term, making congressional support available.
As CNNreported, with new federal support, local policymakers in places like Mecklenburg County, North Carolina have been able to secure vending machines with naloxone, a medication that can rapidly reverse an opioid overdose; employ epidemiologists who focus on opioid trends to prevent deaths; and infrastructure that has helped public workers determine where to target their overdose prevention work.
But the CDC's National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which funded those programs, was targeted by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency earlier this year as its Trump-appointed leader, billionaire tech CEO Elon Musk, sought to cut federal jobs. The center is also identified as a "duplicative, DEI, or simply unnecessary" program that should be cut in the White House's proposed budget.
"Any changes or impacts to those funding streams would mean that we either have to find other funding to support the team that works in that department, or we would have to lay them off. That would, of course, impact the work," Dr. Raynard Washington, director of the county health department, told CNN. "Experts work hand-in-hand with us on the strategies that we choose to implement on the ground, and then how we're evaluating what's working, and then how we share those best practices. That technical assistance is also just as invaluable as the actual grant dollars that we receive."
Medicaid cuts in the proposed budget, which would slash $880 billion in federal spending to secure tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and corporations, could also reverse the historic progress made in 2024, as the healthcare program covers 47% of people with opioid use disorder and 64% of people who receive outpatient treatment.
Chad Sabora, a drug policy expert who helped spearhead the letter, told The Washington Post that cuts to Medicaid will leave people without medications they use to diminish the effects of opioid use disorder, like buprenorphine.
"It will equal more people dying," he told the Post.
On Monday, more than 320 faculty members from universities and other institutions wrote to Republican and Democratic Senate leaders to warn them that "dismantling the lifesaving work" of the CDC and other health agencies in the budget would have "dire consequences."
"At a time when the federal government should be boosting investments in behavioral health systems, service delivery, and public health surveillance programs, we are seeing drastic cuts to key agencies, including the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), the CDC, and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA)," they said.
The 2026 fiscal year budget proposes over $1 billion in cuts to SAMHSA—a reduction of 16% of its funding—and $3.6 billion in cuts to the CDC, or nearly half if its funding.
The faculty members listed a number of programs that will be impacted those cuts, including:
- State and local health departments and behavioral health agencies;
- Evidence-based prevention programs like community-based naloxone distribution, peer outreach programs, drug-use related infectious disease prevention programs, and drug test strip programs, which help people determine whether a drug is laced with fentanyl;
- The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (SAMHSA), which is used extensively by policymakers, researchers, and health professionals and gives accurate population estimates of trends in alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; and
- The Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program and Substance Use Disorder Treatment and Recovery Loan Repayment Program (HRSA), which will train the next generation of substance use care specialists across the country, with special programs dedicated to rural areas.
"Members of Congress, we urge you to protect these vital substance use and mental health services. Millions of Americans are depending on you," wrote the experts.
The White House signaled in the proposed budget that it doesn't support evidence-based harm reduction programs funded through SAMHSA grants, calling them "dangerous activities."
Adams Sibley, a researcher at the University of North Carolina, told CNN that "now is the time to double down on efforts to educate and recruit folks into harm reduction and treatment, whatever their version of safer use looks like."
With fellow researcher Nabarun Dasgupta, Sibley tracked gradual declines in overdose deaths in cities and states over the past three years, before the national shift was seen in 2024.
They identified shifts in the population of drug users, with a growing number of people in the at-risk population taking advantage of newly funded treatment options—or having already died of overdoses—as one contributing factor to the plunging overdose death numbers last year, as well as a change in the supply of drugs available.
"The general dissatisfaction with the illicit opioid supply right now is surprisingly high," Dasgupta told CNN, pointing to the animal sedative xylazine, also known as "tranq."
Many users have reached an "inflection point" with their substance use disorders, said Sibley and Dasgupta, and policymakers must ensure the treatment and prevention programs funded by the CDC, SAMHSA, and other agencies are still there for them.
"The one thing that substance use treatment providers and people who use drugs alike will tell you is that people are ready when they're ready, and there are a lot of people ready right now," Sibley said.
Daniel Ciccarone, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, cautioned that even with last year's significant decrease, "we're still at very high levels of overdose."
"We need steady pressure," he told CNN. "To the degree that we stop paying attention... we will see a reversal."
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