Kennedy Scales Back the Number of Vaccines Recommended for Children

 

Kennedy Scales Back the Number of Vaccines Recommended for Children

 

Federal health officials now recommend that children be routinely inoculated against 11 diseases, not 17, citing standards in other wealthy nations.

 

Apoorva Mandavilli

By Apoorva Mandavilli

Jan. 5, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/05/health/children-vaccines-cdc-kennedy.html

 

Federal health officials on Monday announced dramatic revisions to the slate of vaccines recommended for American children, reducing the number of diseases prevented by routine shots to 11 from 17.

 

Jim O’Neill, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has updated the agency’s immunization schedule to reflect the changes, effective immediately, officials said at a news briefing.

 

The announcement represents a momentous shift in federal vaccine policy, and perhaps the most significant change yet in public health practice by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, who has long sought to reduce the number of shots American children receive.

 

The states, not the federal government, have the authority to mandate vaccinations. But recommendations from the C.D.C. greatly influence state regulations. Mr. Kennedy and his appointees have made other alterations to the childhood vaccination schedule, but those have had smaller impact.

 

The new schedule circumvents the detailed and methodical evidence-based process that has underpinned vaccine recommendations in the nation for decades. Until now, a federal panel of independent advisers typically reviewed scientific data for each new vaccine, and when and how it should be administered to children, before making recommendations.

 

Public health experts expressed outrage at the sweeping revisions, saying federal officials did not present evidence to support the changes or incorporate input from vaccine experts.

 

“The abrupt change to the entire U.S. childhood vaccine schedule is alarming, unnecessary, and will endanger the health of children in the United States,” said Dr. Helen Chu, a physician and immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and a former member of the federal vaccine advisory committee.

 

Dr. Chu also took issue with the health officials’ claim that the move would increase trust in vaccines and raise immunization rates. It will do the opposite, she warned.

 

“Already, parents are worried about what they are hearing in the news about safety of vaccines, and this will increase confusion and decrease vaccine uptake,” Dr. Chu said.

 

Mistrust of vaccines has already led to a steady decline in vaccination rates and a resurgence of preventable diseases like measles and pertussis, or whooping cough. In 2025, the United States recorded more cases of measles than it had in any year since 1993.

 

Later this month, the country may lose its official measles elimination status, which it has held since 2000.

 

“Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we can no longer trust the leadership of our federal government for credible information about vaccines, and that’s a tragedy that will cause needless suffering,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the infectious disease committee at the American Academy of Pediatrics.

 

The pediatrics academy “will continue to publish evidence-based vaccination schedules with the best interests of Americans at their core, not based on a political agenda,” he said. The academy is suing the health and human services department after it canceled $12 million in grants for child health programs to the organization.

 

The C.D.C.’s new schedule continues to recommend vaccines against some diseases, including measles, polio and whooping cough, for all children.

 

Immunization against six other illnesses — hepatitis A, hepatitis B, meningococcal disease, rotavirus, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, the leading cause of hospitalization in American infants — will be recommended for only some high-risk groups or after consultation with a health care provider.

 

In September, a federal panel of vaccine advisers also recommended that vaccinations against Covid-19 also be administered only after consultation with a health care provider.

 

Changes to the vaccine schedule

Federal health officials reduced the number of diseases prevented by routine shots, narrowing recommendations for certain vaccines to only high-risk children or after consultation with a health care provider.

 

No longer recommended for all children

At birth

Hepatitis B 1st dose

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) 1st

1 month

Hepatitis B 2nd

2 months

Diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis (DTaP) 1st

Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) 1st

Polio 1st

Pneumococcal (PCV) 1st

Rotavirus (RV) 1st

4 months

DTaP 2nd

Hib 2nd

Polio 2nd

PCV 2nd

RV 2nd

6 months

DTaP 3rd

Polio 3rd

PCV 3rd

Hepatitis B 3rd

12 months

Hepatitis A 1st and 2nd

Hib 3rd

PCV 4th

Measles, Mumps, Rubella (MMR) 1st

Varicella (Chickenpox) 1st

15 months

DTaP 4th

4 years

DTaP 5th

Polio 4th

MMR 2nd

Chickenpox 2nd

11 years

Human Papillomavirus (HPV) 1st

HPV 2nd

Meningococcal 1st

Tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis (Tdap) 1st

16 years

Meningococcal 2nd

Annual

Flu*

Covid-19*

*Starting at 6 months, administer two doses the first year, then one dose annually.

Note: The start of the age range for each recommended dose is shown.Elena Shao/The New York Times

 

The need to see a doctor will deter some parents and lead to a drop in immunization rates, some experts said. The change “puts the burden on pediatricians and parents to make these decisions without guidance,” Dr. Chu said. “This policy moves us backward, not forward.”

 

It is unclear what evidence led to these decisions, said Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the C.D.C. center that oversaw vaccine policy before he resigned in August.

 

“Stealth announcements of seismic changes in vaccine policy should include experts in pediatrics, infectious diseases and immunology,” Dr. Daskalakis said. “These are lacking, as is scientific process and a review of the data.”

 

On Dec. 5, President Trump directed Mr. Kennedy to align the U.S. vaccination schedule with those of other wealthy nations, citing Denmark, Germany and Japan.

 

“President Trump directed us to examine how other developed nations protect their children and to take action if they are doing better,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement on Monday.

 

“After an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent,” he added. “This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health.”

 

Health officials said the changes would not affect access to the vaccines or their coverage by insurance companies.

 

“All vaccines currently recommended by C.D.C. will remain covered by insurance without cost sharing,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in a statement.

 

“No family will lose access,” Dr. Oz said.

 

AHIP, a national trade organization for many health insurers, and Blue Cross Blue Shield both said all vaccines that the C.D.C. previously recommended would be covered through at least the end of 2026.

 

Federal officials called the United States a “global outlier among peer nations” in terms of the vaccines it recommends. But public health experts noted that with one or two exceptions, the vaccination schedule in the United States was nearly identical to those of Canada, Britain, Australia and Germany.

 

Japan omits some vaccines in the American schedule but includes others, like a shot against Japanese encephalitis, that are not routinely administered in the United States.

 

Even with the president’s endorsement, some legal experts questioned whether Mr. Kennedy had the authority unilaterally to remake the vaccine schedule.

 

Under a federal law called the Administrative Procedure Act, “agencies are supposed to undertake a rigorous process and ground these kinds of major policy decisions in evidence,” said Richard H. Hughes IV, a lawyer who teaches vaccine law at George Washington University.

 

Agencies are forbidden to act “arbitrarily and capriciously,” Mr. Hughes said. (Mr. Hughes is leading an effort to sue Mr. Kennedy and the health department over changes to Covid vaccine recommendations Mr. Kennedy announced last year.)

 

Health officials said that they reviewed vaccine recommendations in 20 countries, and that the new schedule reflects “consensus” over the shots considered most important.

 

But their “decision will have to justify clearly both why this is a good idea, given the differences between the countries, and why the secretary thinks it’s justified to overturn prior expert recommendations, to survive judicial review,” said Dorit Reiss, an expert on vaccine policy and law at the University of California College of the Law, San Francisco.

 

Discussions with health officials in other nations convinced U.S. officials to preserve recommendations for the shot against varicella, or chickenpox, as well as for one dose of the vaccine against the human papillomavirus, which is credited with sharply reducing the risk of cervical cancer among American women.

 

Experts have pointed out that each country’s schedule is designed to fit its population and health care realities. The childhood schedule now closely resembles that of Denmark, a country with free health care and a population about 2 percent of that of the United States.

 

Denmark omits some vaccinations from its recommendations not because of any concerns about safety, but because they may be too expensive for the government to purchase, given the risks in that population.

 

But for many of those diseases, the situation in the United States is vastly different, some public health experts — including some in Denmark and Germany — have said.

 

Before the rotavirus vaccine was routinely administered in the United States, for example, the disease led to the hospitalization of up to 70,000 American children each year.

 

Stipulating that parents can choose to get the vaccine for their children after consulting with a health care provider may imply to parents that they can reasonably omit the shot, said Dr. Paul Offit, a vaccine expert at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and an inventor of a rotavirus vaccine.

 

“We don’t have a national health system, so a lot of people don’t have access to physicians, certainly not easily,” Dr. Offit said.

 

Without a recommendation for routine vaccination, he added, “there will be more children who are going to be at risk of severe, severe dehydration from this virus.”

 

Reed Abelson contributed reporting.

 

Apoorva Mandavilli reports on science and global health for The Times, with a focus on infectious diseases and pandemics and the public health agencies that try to manage them.