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Anti-vaccine advocate

RFK Jr. revokes COVID shot recommendations for kids, during pregnancy

Kennedy’s move may make it harder for kids and pregnant people to get vaccinated.

Beth Mole – | 203
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary walk together at the White House on May 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | Kevin Dietsch
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (R) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Martin Makary walk together at the White House on May 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. Credit: Getty | Kevin Dietsch
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Anti-vaccine advocate and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has unilaterally revoked federal recommendations for healthy children and pregnant people to get COVID-19 booster shots.

The abrupt change, announced on social media, could make it yet more difficult, if not impossible, for healthy children and pregnant people to have access to the seasonal vaccines, which have proven safe and effective at protecting both of those groups from severe illness.

In a regulatory meeting last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention epidemiologist Ruth Link-Gelles presented 2023–2024 data showing that COVID-19 boosters effectively protected children and teens from needing urgent or emergency care due to COVID-19 (slide 36). In children 9 months to 4 years old in that season, the boosters provided 52 percent added effectiveness over background immunity from past vaccination and illness. The boosters were 64 percent effective in kids ages 5 to 17.

Likewise, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and health experts have firmly recommended COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant people. Even leaders of the Food and Drug Administration under Kennedy have identified pregnancy as a medical condition that increases the risk of severe COVID-19. Last week, FDA leaders announced a framework to restrict COVID-19 booster access only to people 65 and older and those with medical conditions that increase risks—the FDA’s list of those medical conditions includes “pregnancy and recent pregnancy.”

Vaccination during pregnancy also protects newborns. A 2022 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine found that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy “reduced risk of hospitalization for COVID-19, including for critical illness, among infants younger than 6 months of age.”

Unprecedented

Nevertheless, in the video posted on social media Tuesday, Kennedy announced that he “couldn’t be more pleased” that “as of today” the COVID-19 vaccine has been removed from the CDC’s recommended immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women. He falsely claimed that there was a “lack of any clinical data” to support the use of booster shots.

In the video, Kennedy was flanked by Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, and Marty Makary, the Food and Drug Administration commissioner. Makary, who listed pregnancy as a risk factor for severe COVID-19 illness just last week, said in the video that there’s no evidence for use in healthy children. Bhattacharya chimed in to say Kennedy’s announcement is “common sense and it’s good science.”

“We’re now one step closer to realizing President Trump’s promise to make America healthy again,” Kennedy concludes.

Kennedy’s move, like the FDA’s last week, is unprecedented in bypassing the transparent, evidence-based process for setting vaccination recommendations. The CDC sets this guidance and relies on in-depth input from its advisory committee of independent vaccine experts, ACIP.

ACIP meets periodically in all-day meetings to publicly review detailed data on vaccine safety and effectiveness, hear from various stakeholders—vaccine makers, clinicians, patients, scientists, and federal regulators—and discuss recommendations before holding votes on what they think the CDC should do. The CDC typically adopts ACIP’s recommendations.

ACIP has not recommended any such change. Its next meeting is scheduled for June 25–27, when it may discuss COVID-19 vaccines for this season.

“Catastrophic”

After Kennedy made the announcement, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) released a statement from President Steven Fleischman, saying that “ACOG is concerned about and extremely disappointed” by the move.

“As ob-gyns who treat patients every day, we have seen firsthand how dangerous COVID-19 infection can be during pregnancy and for newborns who depend on maternal antibodies from the vaccine for protection, Fleischman said. “[T]he science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families. The COVID-19 vaccine is safe during pregnancy, and vaccination can protect our patients and their infants after birth.”

Fleischman ended by saying that ACOG is worried that fewer of their patients will get vaccinated and that those who want to get vaccinated will not have access or insurance coverage due to the announcement. “And as ob-gyns, we are very concerned about the potential deterioration of vaccine confidence in the future,” he concluded.

This post has been updated to include the response from ACOG.

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Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter
Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.
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