The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend that healthy children and pregnant women receive the COVID-19 vaccine, the Trump administration announced Tuesday.
“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot despite the lack of any critical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a video posted online.
Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary added that “there’s no evidence that healthy kids need it today and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.”
The move comes one week after top health officials signaled that they planned to tighten access to the annual COVID-19 booster shot, which is still recommended for elderly and at-risk populations.
Previously, COVID-19 vaccines had been recommended for everyone six months and older.
Under the framework announced last week, the administration will allow seniors 65 and older and other high-risk populations to receive the COVID booster shot but require more stringent testing for other populations before recommending it for them.
Kennedy and many of his fellow top health officials, such as Makary and National Institutes of Health (NIH) Director Jay Bhattacharya, have long raised suspicions about distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine to low-risk populations. --->READ MORE HERE
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| AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana |
Attorney Edward Swidriski warned the lack of funds will cause further layoffs at local public health departments, including in his home Harris County, Texas, which is facing an active measles outbreak.
A coalition of local governments and a government employees union urged a federal judge Wednesday to halt the Trump administration’s effort to terminate active public health funding allocated during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Harris County, Texas, joined by Columbus, Ohio, Nashville and Davidson County, Tennessee, Kansas City, Missouri, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal employees argued the “mass termination” of approximately $11 billion in outstanding grants infringed the authority of Congress.
The funds, allocated via several acts — like the Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), the Coronavirus Response and Relive Supplemental Appropriations Act, the American Rescue Plan Act and the Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act — were intended to assist local pandemic responses and prepare for future outbreaks.
On March 24, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention decided to terminate the public health funding for states, cities and tribes.
The agencies then sent termination letters explaining that “now that the pandemic is over, the grants and cooperative agreements are no longer necessary as their limited purpose has run out.”
That funding has helped prop up critical operations at their public health departments. Without that funding departments have already begun laying off staff, the coalition says in its April 24 lawsuit.
Worse, Harris County attorney Edward Swidriski argued, the sudden decision to freeze the funding will have significant impacts on communities currently facing outbreaks of infectious diseases, like the ongoing spread of measles throughout Harris County. --->READ MORE HEREFollow links below to relevant/related stories and resources:
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USA TODAY: Coronavirus Updates
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