New York (AP)-Health Minister Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday that Covid 19 vaccines are no longer recommended for healthy children and pregnant women-a step that is immediately questioned by several public health experts.
In a 58-second video published on the social media website X, Kennedy said that he removed Covid 19 shots from the centers for the control of the disease and the recommendations for prevention for these groups. Nobody from the CDC was in the video, and CDC officers referred questions about announcing Kennedy and the US Health Ministry and the US service.
No further details were published, and HHS officers did not immediately answer questions about how the decision was made.
Some doctors and managers in the field of public health called the step in relation to and confusing.
“There is no new data or information, just you fly at the seat of your pants,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Diseases and Politics of the University of Minnesota.
U.S. health officers, according to recommendations from experts in infectious diseases, have written down the annual Covid 19 booster for all Americans aged 6 months and over.
The idea of ​​changing the recommendations is not completely out of the blue. Since the Covid 19 pandemic has decreased, experts have increasingly discussed the opportunity to focus on people aged 65 and over as a risk of death and hospitalization.
A CDC advisory committee will meet in June to give recommendations for the autumn shots. To the options, recordings for high -risk proposals propose, but still offer the selection of being vaccinated.
But Kennedy, a leading lawyer against Avaccine before becoming a Minister of Health, decided not to wait for the scientific body to be checked. He said that annual Covid 19-Booster shots for children were recommended “despite the lack of clinical data” to support this decision.
Some doctors and managers in the field of public health were concerned that HHS officials ignored a scientific review process that has been present for decades and in which experts – in public meetings – review current medical evidence and have the advantages and disadvantages of political changes.
“It is a dangerous precedent. If you can start doing this vaccine, you can start to do with any desired vaccine-in such a way into mumps-Measles-Rubella,” said Osterholm and referred to another vaccine that Kennedy has expressed.
He and others said that the announcement raised a number of questions, including the question of whether health insurance companies continue to cover the vaccinations of Covid-13 and how arduous it will now be for people who want the recordings to get them.
“The reason why we give healthy people vaccines is to protect them,” said Dr. Georges Benjamin, Managing Director of the American Public Health Association.
More than 1.2 million people died from Covid-19 in the USA, most of them older people. But children were not spared: According to the CDC data, the Coronavirus has been the underlying cause in more than 1,300 deaths in childhood since the beginning of the pandemic.
The Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Marty Makary and Dr. Jay Bhattcharya, head of the National Institutes of Health, performed with Kennedy in the video.
At the beginning of this year, during the nomination process, Kennedy admitted to the Republicans that he would not change the federal vaccination plan.
Since then, Kennedy and other representatives of the Trump administration have made the system for approval and utilize of vaccines major changes.
They added a recently approved vaccine approval to restrictions. Last week, the FDA announced that the routine-covid 19 vaccines will be confined to seniors and younger people with underlying medical risks until it has recent research for healthy adults and children.
Under the confusion created by the announcement on Tuesday, experts was the implication that the corona virus is not hazardous for pregnant women.
During the height of the pandemic, the death of women during pregnancy or shortly after birth at the highest level rose for 50 years. In fact, pregnancy was on the list of health states that would qualify someone for a COVID 19 vaccination as part of the past week.
The vaccination was sometimes recommended for pregnant women, as this is a way to hand over immunity against newborns who are too adolescent for vaccines and are susceptible to infections.
“To say that you have no risk is just wrong,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary from the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Dr. Steven Fleischman, President of the American College of Obsticians and Gynecologists, said: “Science has not changed. It is very clear that a covid infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and can lead to greater disability and cause devastating consequences for families.”
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