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.
