HHS Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr makes good on promise to reduce the number of recommended vaccines.

US health officials announced Monday an overhauled version of the vaccines recommended to infants and adolescents, shrinking the number of diseases for which vaccines should be administered from 17 to 11. 

The decision follows a December 5, 2025 directive from President Donald Trump to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to review the US childhood vaccine schedule in comparison to those of wealthy, peer-nations, citing Denmark, Germany and Japan in particular.

The revisions now mean that the US will go from being one of the developed nations with the highest number of diseases covered – to one of the lowest – according to HHS’s own analysis.

In fact, only Denmark recommends fewer jabs – for just 10 diseases in total. Greece and Ireland recommend immunization for 16 diseases and five countries recommend immunization against 15 diseases, including Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom.  Japan recommends childhood immunization against 14 different diseases.

Among the core vaccines CDC will no longer recommend for all children are those that protect against rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A, and hepatitis B (HBV). 

The CDC also dropped a relatively new recommendation for newborns to be vaccinated against  Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) – if their mothers had not been previously vaccinated.  

RSV is the single largest cause of childhood hospitalizations in the US today, burdening the healthcare system with 80,000 hospitalizations a year. 

And the new CDC policy reduces the number of recommended doses against HPV – a key cause of cervical cancer – from two to one. This is contrary to the two-dose advice of most other developed nations and the World Health Organization. WHO’s cervical cancer elimination strategy calls for a dramatic reduction in cases by 2030, largely through mass immunization programs. 

Another key point of concern for US public health experts is the removal of any broad recommendation for vaccination against hepatitis B – a leading cause of liver disease and a vaccine that almost every other developed country includes for newborns or infants. Instead, the updated recommendation urges caregivers to consult with their physicians if their child falls into a “high risk” category. 

Already in December 2025, the CDC in recommended to delay  administration of the hepatitis B (HBV) vaccine for infants by six months. 

The Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr’s longtime skepticism about the HBV vaccine played a central part of his Senate confirmation hearing where Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), a medical doctor and liver specialist, credited the vaccine with saving some 90,000 children’s lives in the US since 1991. 

Despite the reassurances that Kennedy provided at that time to the Senate Confirmation Committee to follow well-established evidence on immunization’s benefits, the HHS Secretary, who built his career around vaccine hesitancy, has now made good on his previous record as a vaccine skeptic.    

Changes announced Monday following a brief review

The changes were announced abruptly Monday by acting Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Jim O’Neill.  He directed the public health agency to move forward immediately on the new CDC recommendations. 

The Trump Administration’s health leadership has argued that the change will increase transparency and rebuild trust in health institutions. 

“After an exhaustive review of the evidence, we are aligning the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule with international consensus while strengthening transparency and informed consent. This decision protects children, respects families, and rebuilds trust in public health,” Kennedy said in the statement. 

But the overhaul also is an unprecedented departure from the evidence-based process the US previously used to decide its vaccine schedule.

Normally an independent federal advisory panel of experts would review studies and data for each vaccine before publishing recommendations. 

In this instance, CDC director O’Neill issued the changes in a memorandum responding to a request by Trump for such a review only a month ago – and with the underlying analysis based on a comparison of schedules in other nations.  

The comparisons between the seemingly high number of actual shots, or  jabs, US children previously received as compared to those of other nations is also somewhat misleading – insofar as annual flu and COVID-19 vaccines up until the age of 18 are included in the US count of previous recommendations – totaling about 35 or 36 more shots across 18 years. 

But in November, the CDC last year already stated that COVID vaccination for children, while recommended, should be a matter of “individual decision-making.”  And WHO’s own recommendations for COVID-19 vaccination of children were already reversed  post-pandemic, advising only one dose for never-vaccinated children with co-morbidities. 

In 2010, the CDC did adopt a universal recommendation for annual childhood sesasonal flu vaccination. That went further than the current WHO recommendation which recommends prioritizing seasonal flu vaccine for “health workers, individuals with comorbidities and underlying conditions, older adults and pregnant women,” adding only that “Depending on national disease goals, capacity and resources, epidemiology, national policies and priorities, and disease burden, countries may consider additional (sub)populations for vaccination, such as children.”

Concerns that hospitalizations, deaths may increase

 

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A post shared by Jessica Malaty Rivera, MS | Making Science Make Sense (@jessicamalatyrivera)

“Fewer vaccinations (specifically for rotavirus, COVID-19, influenza, RSV, meningococcal disease, hepatitis A and hepatitis B) will result in an increase in disease, disability, and death, wrote epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist Jessica Malaty Rivera in a post. 

“Please ignore this unscientific nonsense and follow the @ameracadpeds schedule alongside your pediatrician.” 

Prior to the vaccines and therapeutics that prevent RSV, for instance, the virus accounted for over one in four hospitalizations among young children in the US. 

Other physicians and health experts criticized the shift for causing confusion and for ignoring decades of vaccine studies demonstrating safety and efficacy. 

“Know this: Even as our government shifts its recommendation language, I would never forgo the RSV, hepatitis A & B, or meningitis vaccines for my own kids,” said Dr Scott Hadland, a pediatrician and chief of adolescent medicine at Harvard.

“This is health policy malpractice at the highest level and must be reversed before children and families suffer,” said Dr George C Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

Attempt to bring US “in-line” with other wealthy countries

The 33-page CDC policy document argues that in light of falling vaccination rates across the US and the lack of trust in public health institutions, the US should therefore cut back on the number of recommended vaccines.

“Bringing the U.S. pediatric immunization schedule in line with the consensus of peer nations while keeping non-consensus vaccines available for high-risk groups and populations and/orthrough shared clinical decision-making is a balanced approach to reform and restore trust in public health,” the document says.

Traditionally, the US has recommended slightly more vaccines, on average, than “peer” nations. However, the US also continues to face surges of measles, hepatitis A, RSV, and other infectious diseases. 

The other problem with policy decisions based on comparisons with other high income countries experts say, is that the US has a far larger, and more sickly, population that often lacks access to primary healthcare. 

“Many high-income countries have universal coverage and paid family leave that make it easier to get care and stay safe when kids get sick,” said Dr Uché Blackstock, a physician and health equity advocate in a social media post. 

“You cannot copy the [vaccine] list without copying the supports,” Blackstock said. 

Denmark and Japan’s healthier population, more robust healthcare systems, surveillance, testing, and social support mean there is less of a reliance on vaccines. 

“We have fragmented insurance, we’ve got millions uninsured, we don’t have a national health registry and we’ve got enormous gaps in the continuity of care,” said Dr. Jake Scott, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University School of Medicine. “And we use broader vaccine recommendations because our system can’t reliably identify and follow up with every person at risk.”

Assessment downplays risk of rotavirus, meningococcal disease, HPV

Of the vaccines being cut from the list, RSV and rotavirus pose a significant burden to the healthcare system. Prior to the RSV maternal vaccine and monoclonal antibodies, up to 80,000 children were hospitalized with the virus. Nearly all children were infected with rotavirus prior to the vaccine. It caused 20-60 deaths each year, according to the CDC.

“Reasonable people can reach different conclusions about recommending the rotavirus vaccine for all children,” says the assessment. 

The assessment also argued that low rates of meningococcal disease warranted an end of recommendations. “Considering the low incidence of meningococcal disease in the U.S., the meningococcal vaccine should not be part of the consensus recommended vaccine schedule.” These low rates are due in large part to vaccinations.

Still covered by health insurers? 

The vaccines dropped from the CDC’s recommendations should still be covered by health insurance systems  – the new CDC policy also states. 

But it is unclear whether health insurers in the US’s fragmented public health system will in fact guarantee continued access for all of those who would like to get a shot – once the actual CDC recommendation has been removed. 

The authors of the new CDC policy are Dr Tracy Beth Høeg, a Danish-American physician and Food and Drug Administration director of the Center for Drug Research and Evaluation, and Martin Kulldorff.  

They are self-described in the assessment as “one of the most pro-vaccine scientists in the country” – however, they garnered significant attention during the COVID pandemic for their anti-COVID-19 vaccine stances. 

Kulldorff’s bio continues in the assessment: “In early 2021, he was one of the first public health scientists to publicly oppose Covid vaccine mandates and it is hard to imagine a policy doing more harm to the trust in vaccines and public health.”

Image Credits: European Union, Quinn Dombrowski, HHS , Amy Rossetti, CDC.