By Josh Nathan-Kazis

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. pulled back on recommendations for Covid-19 shots on Tuesday, seemingly contradicting a policy the Food and Drug Administration announced last week. The health secretary's online declaration also skips the regulatory process that is usually applied to vaccine decisions.

In a video posted on social media, Kennedy said that the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention would no longer recommend Covid-19 shots for healthy children and healthy pregnant women. That means that insurers could stop paying for the shots for those groups.

The agency had previously recommended that "everyone" older than six months receive an updated booster shot each year. The new recommendations appear to maintain that guidance for most adults, excluding healthy pregnant women from the recommendation.

The Tuesday announcement clashes with the approach to Covid-19 shots that FDA Commissioner Marty Makary laid out last week, which called out the need for pregnant women to receive updated versions of the Covid-19 vaccines.

In a New England Journal of Medicine article Makary published last week, Makary included "pregnancy" as among the "underlying medical conditions" that increase the risk of severe Covid-19. On Tuesday, Makary stood alongside Kennedy in the video announcing the new policy, which will limit access to Covid-19 shots for pregnant women.

The FDA didn't respond when asked about the apparent contradiction.

"It makes no sense at all," says Dr. Céline Gounder, editor at large for public-health for KFF Health News and an infectious disease specialist at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. "They are contradicting themselves. And we know pregnant women are at increased risk for severe Covid."

The federal government's vaccine recommendations are normally set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in consultation with an outside group of experts called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP. ACIP hasn't voted on the change Kennedy announced Tuesday. The committee last met in April and is scheduled to meet again in late June.

"This is a unilateral decision made behind closed doors that doesn't make any sense," says Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, a former member of ACIP, and a current member of the FDA's vaccine advisory committee. "For all of his, 'I'm not going to take away vaccines from people who want them,' that's exactly what he's doing," Offit says of Kennedy. "And he's making them less available and less accessible."

There is currently no CDC director, and no representative from the agency appeared in Kennedy's Tuesday video. Instead, he appeared beside Makary and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health.

Kennedy, a longtime critic of vaccines and vaccine safety, moderated his rhetoric on vaccines while he was awaiting confirmation as health secretary. He eventually won the support of Louisiana Republican senator Bill Cassidy with what Cassidy said on the Senate floor was a commitment to "maintain" the CDC's ACIP "without changes."

A spokesperson for Cassidy didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about Kennedy's latest announcement and how it fits within that commitment.

Historically, ACIP advises the FDA on whether to approve a vaccine, with the FDA voting on final approval. ACIP then decides how to recommend its use, and the CDC director signs off on those recommendations.

At its April meeting, ACIP had signaled that it intended to narrow its recommendations for who should receive Covid-19 shots. But Offit said the group likely would have issued a recommendation that would maintain insurance coverage for people not at high risk who still chose to get the shots.

Shares of Moderna and Pfizer, maker of Covid-19 shots, were up 2.7% and 1.2%, respectively on Tuesday.

Write to Josh Nathan-Kazis at josh.nathan-kazis@barrons.com

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May 27, 2025 13:59 ET (17:59 GMT)

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