The American Academy of Pediatrics released its recommendations for childhood vaccines on Monday, breaking significantly with the guidance released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier this month.
The AAP is recommending immunization against 18 diseases, including RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, rotavirus, influenza and meningococcal disease. The CDC had reduced its recommendations for childhood vaccines to 11 diseases.
“The AAP will continue to provide recommendations for immunizations that are rooted in science and are in the best interest of the health of infants, children and adolescents of this country,” AAP President Andrew Racine said in a statement Monday.
Dr. Amanda Kravitz, a pediatrician at New York’s Weill Cornell Medicine, told “CBS Evening News” anchor Tony Dokoupil the AAP is “still recommending all of the vaccines that we have been recommending for many, many years.”
“So, there are no changes to the old vaccine schedule based on what the AAP is currently recommending,” Kravitz said.
Both the AAP and CDC recommend vaccinating children against diphtheria, tetanus, acellular pertussis (whooping cough), Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib), Pneumococcal conjugate, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, human papillomavirus (HPV) and varicella (chickenpox). (Some vaccines, such as the MMR shot for measles, mumps and rubella, protect against multiple diseases.)
The CDC recommended that only children in high-risk categories receive immunizations for RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue, meningococcal ACWY and meningococcal B. The AAP still recommends all of these, except for the dengue vaccine, which it only recommends for some children who are 9 to 16 years old, live in areas where the disease is endemic and have previously been infected. It also noted distribution of the dengue vaccine was discontinued in the U.S. last year due to low demand.
The CDC had also said parents of children not in high-risk groups who want to vaccinate against COVID-19, influenza, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and hepatitis B should base that decision on “shared clinical decision-making” with physicians.
“It’s important that you partner with your pediatrician,” Kravitz said Monday. “We are here to help you. We want to try to rid some of that confusion from families. So, we want you to bring your questions to us. We, as pediatricians, are going to follow the AAP recommendations, but we also want to have open lines of communication with our families.”
The AAP called the CDC’s guidance “dangerous and unnecessary” at the time of its release.
“The AAP formerly partnered with the CDC to create a unified set of vaccine recommendations, but recent changes to the CDC immunization schedule depart from longstanding medical evidence and no longer offer the optimal way to prevent illnesses in children,” the AAP said Monday. “By contrast, the AAP childhood and adolescent immunization schedules continue to recommend immunizations based on the specific disease risks and health care delivery in the United States.”
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees the CDC, said in a statement Monday, “The updated CDC childhood schedule continues to protect children against serious diseases while aligning U.S. guidance with international norms,” adding it would “work with states and clinicians to ensure families have clear, accurate information to make their own informed decisions.”
Kravitz said insurance will still cover vaccines no longer recommended by the CDC, like the flu and COVID-19 vaccines.
“The way the CDC recommended them is there is still the option to get those vaccines if you’d like them, so insurance should cover every vaccine as long as parents want them,” she said.
The changes in the CDC childhood vaccine recommendations followed a controversial December recommendation on when children should receive their first dose of the hepatitis B vaccine. For more than 30 years, the CDC advised that the first dose be given within 24 hours of birth. The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, which has been hand-picked by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a longtime vaccine critic, voted to recommend delaying the shot until a child is 2 months old for those born to mothers who test negative for the virus.
In an interview with CBS News chief White House correspondent Nancy Cordes earlier this month, Kennedy insisted, “We’re not taking vaccines away from anybody. If you want to get the vaccine, you can get it. It’s gonna be fully covered by insurance, just like it was before.”
But Kennedy did concede there is now an added step to getting children the flu vaccine, as it requires consultation with a physician first, rather than it being freely administered at a pharmacy, and he said it might be “a better thing” if fewer people get the flu vaccine.
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