Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is considering removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the federal list of recommended vaccines for children. In an interview with Fox News, Kennedy said the move would not prohibit access to the vaccine, but would eliminate it from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) official immunization schedule for children.
“President Trump doesn’t believe that anybody should get mandatory vaccines,” Kennedy said on Fox News. “The COVID vaccine, the recommendation for children, was always dubious. Kids had almost no risk for COVID-19. So why are we giving this to tens of millions of kids when the vaccine itself does have profound risk?”
Current guideline recommendations
Under current CDC guidelines, the COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for children beginning at 6 months old, continuing through age 18 into adulthood. Parents can still choose to vaccinate their children even if the recommendation is lifted.
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The immunization schedule, available on the CDC website, outlines these age-based recommendations in detail.
Longstanding opposition to vaccines for children
Kennedy has voiced opposition to COVID-19 vaccinations for children since the early days of the pandemic. In 2022, while leading the Children’s Health Defense, he wrote to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), threatening legal action over the vaccine’s authorization for minors.
“CHD will seek to hold you accountable for recklessly endangering this population with a product that has little, no, or even negative net efficacy but which may put them, without warning, at risk of many adverse health consequences, including heart damage, stroke and other thrombotic events and reproductive harms,” Kennedy said in a letter to the FDA.
Data on child COVID-19 death rates
According to CDC data, children represent a small fraction of overall COVID-19 deaths. As of the latest reporting:
- 1,100 deaths were among children aged 0 to 4, representing 0.09% of total COVID-19 deaths.
- 394 deaths occurred in children aged 5 to 11, or 0.03%.
- 639 deaths were among children aged 12 to 17, or 0.05%.
These numbers are based on children who died as a result of COVID-19 as “an underlying or contributing cause of death on the death certificate.”
No school mandates for COVID-19 shots
Currently, no schools require COVID-19 vaccinations for students, and 22 states have banned such mandates for school attendance.
The Trump administration has not provided a specific timeline for when a final decision may be made on removing the vaccine from the CDC’s recommended list.
