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The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has updated the childhood immunization schedule to recommend 10, rather than 17, shots for children.
Have you taken your place on the wall?
Trump signed a directive on Dec. 5 ordering the agency to examine best practices from “peer, developed nations” on their childhood vaccination schedules. Following the review, HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill signed a memorandum updating the U.S. schedule on Monday.
The new schedule varies from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s child and adolescent schedule which was updated at the end of 2024, recommending 17 immunizations for all children.
A senior HHS official told reporters on a press call that the action doesn’t remove vaccines from availability.
“No vaccine is being banned or removed,” the official said. “Every vaccine currently recommended by the CDC remains available, fully covered by insurance, without cost sharing. No family will lose access to vaccines.”
HHS’ review found that the United States was a high outlier in terms of the vaccines it recommended to children, an official said.
“We recommend more than any of the 20 peer nations that we assessed in this report,” a senior HHS official said.
“And so we identified the vaccines that were consensus vaccines among essentially all countries to focus on for our recommendations for all children in the United States, and we considered whether or not there were specific epidemiological reasons that the United States should diverge from those, from those vaccines that are consensus vaccines among our peer nations, and we did add varicella to the to the list of vaccinations.”
The new order groups vaccines in the children’s immunization schedule into three categories: immunizations recommended for all children, immunizations recommended for certain high-risk groups or populations, and immunizations based on shared clinical decision making for all children.
The CDC will continue to recommend vaccines that protect against most serious childhood diseases, including measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, pneumococcal disease, HPV, and varicella, according to an HHS official.
The updated schedule allows parents “flexibility and choice” in their child’s vaccination decisions, according to a fact sheet provided by HHS.
“The anticipated benefit of the change is that it will restore the public trust in the vaccination schedule that children that parents have, and will allow the U.S. to align better with how our peer nations are managing the real risk to children from childhood infectious disease,” a senior HHS official said.
Anyone who wants to obtain vaccination for the diseases covered by the previous immunization schedule through Affordable Care Act insurance plans and federal insurance programs, including Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the Vaccines for Children program.
The move will accompany strengthened vaccine research through double-blind, placebo-controlled randomized trials and more observational studies.
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This article was originally published at The Daily Signal. Photo Credit: Official White House Photo by Joyce N. Boghosian.
