NM Department of Health falls in line with CDC reversal on COVID vaccines for kids and pregnant women

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for children and pregnant women, contradicting the medical consensus among pediatricians and OB-GYNs. The New Mexico Department of Health will follow this protocol “as of now,” officials said.

Kennedy is perhaps best known for questioning the safety of vaccines and other governmental health interventions. This fear and vaccine hesitancy culminated in Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, his platform when he ran for president in 2020 before dropping out and endorsing President Donald Trump.

Kennedy’s unilateral overturning of established vaccine norms is also a shakeup in CDC protocol. Typically, such decisions are made by advisory panels of experts and the final call is made by the CDC’s director, not the health secretary. Right now, however, the CDC has no permanent director as Trump awaits confirmation from the Senate of his appointee Susan Monarez. In contrast to Kennedy, Monarez is an infectious disease researcher who has been supportive of COVID-19 vaccines.

This change on the federal level will trickle down, making the vaccine less affordable and accessible, said Dr. Tina Tan, an infectious disease physician at Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago. Insurance providers often make decisions about what vaccines they do or don’t cover based on recommendations from the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, Tan said.

“Last year, the Biden administration urged healthy children to get yet another COVID shot, despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children,” Kennedy said in a video released on social media.

Tan called this claim “completely incorrect” and even dangerous.

Pregnancy is a “major risk factor” for developing serious COVID-19 complications, Tan said, which for pregnant women can involve early delivery, blood clots, heart disease and preeclampsia, a high blood pressure condition that can be life-threatening.

For children, most infections are mild, but there is a slight chance of contracting multisystem inflammatory syndrome, a disease where organs and tissues swell, months after their initial symptoms leading to hospitalization, Tan said. Kids also may suffer from long COVID, in which children are chronically sick for three months or more.

As an infectious disease doctor working in a children’s hospital during the pandemic, Tan saw major COVID-19 complications among children first hand. People turned “a blind eye” to these child cases then, Tan said, and this announcement only furthers the assumption that kids are not affected by the disease that claimed the lives of more than 7 million people to date, according to the World Health Organization.

With fewer people qualifying for vaccination, Tan expects pharmacies, urgent cares and hospitals to order less doses, making the vaccine harder to get, even for those willing to pay out of pocket.

This announcement may not only end coverage for those under private insurers, but recipients of federal assistance like the decades-old Vaccines for Children program, which pays for uninsured youth under 19 to receive certain vaccinations for free. The program covers all vaccinations recommended by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices under the CDC. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also oversees Medicaid, Medicare and numerous other assistance programs.

According to the CDC vaccine price list, one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine can cost between $57 to $141 per dose. And that’s just the price the hospital pays.

Higher prices get passed on to patients. CVS Pharmacy charges nearly $200 per dose for those paying out of pocket. Most people need to receive multiple doses of the vaccine for maximum efficacy.

“Medicine is not based on politics,” Tan said. “What’s occurring right now is that this administration does not think about anybody else but themselves. They don’t think about the consequences of the very poor decisions that they’re making and the major impact it’s going to have on all Americans of every single age.”