NBC News
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., announced on Tuesday that the centers for disease control and prevention will no longer recommend that pregnant women and healthy children be routinely vaccinated against COVID-19.
“We are one step closer than fulfilling the promise of @Potus’s to make the United States healthy again,” Kennedy wrote in a publication on social network X.
Kennedy said that the vaccine will no longer be recommended for “healthy pregnant women”, but it is not clear who meets this requirement because pregnancy itself is considered a risk factor for complications by the virus.
The decision of the CDC arrives a week after the Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Marty Makary, announced that the agency planned to restrict the use of vaccines against COVID-19 for older adults, and children and adults with pre-existing medical conditions.
New vaccines against virus for healthy children and adults will need to go through extensive clinical trials controlled with placebos before being approved.
(A change in FDA guidelines can limit access to vaccines against COVID-19 of healthy adults and children)
Kennedy has a long history of opposing different vaccines, including that of COVID-19. In 2021, he presented a citizen petition asking the FDA to revoke the authorization of vaccines. The same year he described the injections against COVID-19 “as the most lethal vaccine created”, specifically for rare cases of myocarditis in young men.
Studies have found that myocarditis risk is higher for people infected with the virus and usually more severe than after being vaccinated.
In the United States there are no mandatory mandates for vaccines against COVID-19, but experts say millions of people, even those who have already suffered the infection, still need another dose because they are vulnerable to a serious disease by the virus, particularly older adults, people with the weakened immune system and pregnant women.
During the pandemic peak, doctors reported an unprecedented increase in cases of hospitalized pregnant women and in critical condition after infected.
Changes in women’s immune system during pregnancy raise complications such as respiratory viruses such as COVID-19. In April, researchers at the School of Public Health at Brown published a study that found that maternal deaths shot during the pandemic.
Although cases of infections by COVID-19-including hospitalizations and deaths-are currently few, the virus continues to circulate.
