Federal health officials on Monday announced a dramatic rollback on recommended childhood vaccines, cutting back the number of diseases prevented by routine shots from 17 to 11, according to reports.
The major move was pushed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, who has long claimed that children should not have as many vaccines, The New York Times reported.
Public health experts, including pediatricians, have been critical of the Trump administration’s shift in vaccine recommendations for children.
“The abrupt change to the entire U.S. childhood vaccine schedule is alarming, unnecessary and will endanger the health of children in the United States,” Dr. Helen Chu, physician and immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle, told The Times.
Chu, who is also a former member of the federal vaccine advisory committee, challenged the notion that the move could help improve immunization rates or increase trust around vaccine hesitancy.
“Already, parents are worried about what they are hearing in the news about safety of vaccines, and this will increase confusion and decrease vaccine uptake,” Chu said.
Jim O’Neill, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has now changed the agency’s immunization schedule.
President Donald Trump last month instructed Kennedy to change the vaccine schedule to match “wealthy nations, citing Denmark, Germany and Japan,” The Times reported.
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