In the coming days, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to announce that the Department of Health and Human Services will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant people, according to reporting from The Wall Street Journal.
“Something just happened that’s really special,” Leland Lehrman, the Executive Director of a new Make America Healthy Again-affiliated think tank called the MAHA Institute, told attendees at a daylong event for the Institute on Thursday. “I was asked to please make this announcement,” he continued, according to STAT.
“You might’ve already heard, but today the secretary is announcing that HHS and the CDC are going to stop recommending routine COVID shots for children and pregnant women.” The room applauded. Lehrman said, laughing, “That’s good! That’s really good.”
The MAHA Institute, officially launched this week, is the latest spinoff group by Kennedy supporters. According to STAT, the first event for the group featured a crowd including “numerous figures with controversial views, including proponents of raw milk, union leaders against vaccine mandates, and psychiatrists who want to wean patients off of mental health drugs.”
HHS halting the long-held recommendation for children over 6 months old and pregnant people to get one of the approved COVID vaccines is the latest example of the department, stewarded by RFK Jr., opting for skeptical messaging around vaccine efficacy and safety.
Spokespeople for HHS, the CDC, and the White House didn’t immediately respond to the WSJ‘s requests for comment. STAT also attempted to reach HHS for comment.
The Health Department’s expected move to stop recommending the COVID vaccine to pregnant women, teenagers, and children could further endanger immunocompromised people across the nation, according to Richard Hughes, a lawyer and vaccine advocate. Doing so would “have a behavioral impact on whether people choose to get vaccinated,” he told the WSJ. If HHS is no longer recommending routine vaccinations for COVID for these groups, insurance companies “will no longer have to cover these vaccines,” Dorit Reiss, a law professor who studies the anti-vaccine movement, said to STAT’s Isabella Cueto.
Kennedy, before and after joining President Donald Trump’s administration, continuously spread misinformation about vaccines, amplified anti-science solutions to medical ailments, and sowed doubt about widely used vaccines, including those to protect against coronavirus. In 2021, RFK Jr. asked the federal government to revoke its emergency authorization of all COVID vaccines, filing a citizen petition on behalf of Children’s Health Defense, a Kennedy-founded group that advocates against the recommended vaccine schedule for children.
Since taking on the role as Health Secretary, following his failed presidential campaign, Kennedy and his department have tried to discredit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention research which found that increases in autism diagnoses are largely due to broader screening and identification of people in “previously underidentified groups,” and not, as RFK Jr. has advanced, due to the MMR vaccine. In March, the CDC rolled back $11.4 billion in funds for state and community health programs that, in part, include immunizations and vaccines for children. And, in May, announced that all new vaccines would need to undergo placebo testing—a requirement that is likely to delay the availability of certain vaccines and complicate the process of getting vaccines approved.
One legacy already forming for Kennedy is how he’s handled the ongoing measles outbreak started in West Texas. According to The Texas Department of State Health Services, 718 cases have been confirmed since late January and there have been two confirmed deaths—two young girls, ages 6 and 8.
As unvaccinated people continue to spread the disease—many of them from the Mennonite community at the epicenter of the outbreak—Kennedy has continued to amplify untested theories about how to fight measles without vaccination, like steroids, antibiotics, and cod liver oil. This week, Kennedy said during testimony before a House panel that, if he would “probably” vaccinate his child for measles, if he had one today.
During that same panel on Wednesday, Kennedy said, “I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.”
Also at the MAHA Institute conference on Thursday was Mary Holland, president of Children’s Health Defense. She was celebrating with attendees that the group’s ideas have reached such a stage as this.
“Wow, we’ve come a long way,” Holland said. “We have all been waiting for this moment.”
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