CDC stops recommending COVID-19 shots for all, leaves decision to
patients
[October 07, 2025]
By MIKE STOBBE
NEW YORK (AP) — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has
adopted recommendations by a new group of vaccine advisers, and stopped
recommending COVID-19 shots for anyone — leaving the choice up to
patients.
The government health agency on Monday announced it has adopted
recommendations made last month by advisers picked by U.S. Health
Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Before this year, U.S. health officials — following recommendations by
infectious disease experts — recommended annual COVID-19 boosters for
all Americans ages 6 months and older. The idea was to update protection
against the coronavirus as it continues to evolve.
As the COVID-19 pandemic waned, experts increasingly discussed the
possibility of focusing vaccination efforts on people 65 and older — who
are among those most at risk for death and hospitalization.
But Kennedy, who has questioned the safety of COVID-19 vaccines,
abruptly announced in May that COVID-19 vaccines were no longer
recommended for healthy children and pregnant women. He also dismissed
the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and replaced them
with a handpicked group.
The new group voted last month to say all Americans should make their
own decisions. But the CDC also says vaccine decisions, especially for
seniors, should involve checking with a doctor, nurse or pharmacist.
The recommendation was endorsed by Deputy Secretary of Health and Human
Services Jim O'Neill, who is serving as the CDC’s acting director.
O’Neill signed off on it last week, but HHS officials announced it
Monday.
The panel also urged the CDC to adopt stronger language around claims of
vaccine risks, despite pushback from outside medical groups who said the
shots had a proven safety record from the billions of doses administered
worldwide.
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In a statement Monday, O’Neill celebrated the change, saying past
guidance "deterred health care providers from talking about the risks
and benefits of vaccination.”
“Informed consent is back,” O'Neill said in a statement some doctors
objected to.
Doctors routinely discuss vaccines with patients and parents, and share
printed information about the risks and benefits of each shot, said Dr.
Jesse Hackell, a retired New York physician who has coauthored several
American Academy of Pediatrics policy statements on vaccinations.
“To make a statement that informed consent is back implies that it had
gone away. In no way has it gone away,” he said.
Major medical societies continue to recommend shots for younger
children, pregnant women and others at higher risk of severe illness.
They say the Trump administration's discussion of risk overemphasizes
rare side effects and doesn't account for the dangers of coronavirus
infection itself.
The decision clears the government’s Vaccines for Children program to
ship COVID-19 vaccine doses. The program provides routine vaccinations
at no cost to children whose families qualify.
O’Neill also signed off on a panel recommendation that children under 4
get their first vaccine dose for varicella — also known as chickenpox —
as a standalone shot rather than in combination shot with measles, mumps
and rubella.
There is a single shot that contains all four, but it carries a higher
risk of fevers and fever-related seizures. Since 2009, the CDC had said
it prefers separate shots for initial doses of those vaccines and 85% of
toddlers already get the chickenpox vaccine separately.
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