CDC updates COVID-19 vaccine guidelines leaving experts in CT worried

CT Insider –  Monday, June 2, 2025
By Cris Villalonga-Vivoni

Making changes to the Centers for Disease Control recommendations is typically a lengthy and laborious process requiring evidence-based research and multiple discussions with experts and associations before they are published.

Yet, to the surprise of many in the health care field, U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. posted a video to social media last week announcing that the CDC would no longer recommend COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, focusing on a more risk-based approach to vaccines. All new vaccines will also need to undergo more extensive clinical studies before receiving approval. The video was coupled with the Food and Drug Administration’s announcement that the agency is no longer recommending the vaccine for healthy adults under 65 years old.

These are both major shifts from the guidelines that have encouraged COVID-19 vaccines for everyone 6 months and older. It has left some medical experts across the nation concerned about future access and the health effects on patients, especially as variants continue to arise.

Kennedy’s announcement came about a month before the CDC experts were set to meet and discuss recommendations for the booster shot in the upcoming respiratory virus season. NBC News and The Washington Post reported that no one from HHS had consulted leading pediatricians’ groups or CDC experts about the announcement, which started to raise concerns for Roberts and other experts like him on how it may impact an already low national vaccination rate.

“I historically have really trusted the decision-making process, but I don’t know how this decision was made, and that’s a bit concerning,” said Roberts, questioning what even prompted the change in the first place.

Roberts said most children can typically recover from COVID-19 infections and aren’t affected as severely as older adults. However, because of the recommendations, he said it may prevent kids who’d benefit from getting it. There’s also many young children and newborns who haven’t been exposed to the virus before and may not have the same immunity and needing that extra protection from a vaccine.

“COVID is on par with the flu in terms of the disease it causes with kids,” he said. “So it’s surprising to me, they made this change for COVID, but not any other vaccine.”

Several experts also raised issues with the inclusion of pregnant mothers in Kennedy’s announcement, considering the increased number of women who died during pregnancy or after childbirth during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A midwife with more than 30 years of experience, Lucinda Canty, said the recommendation is harmful to pregnant mothers.

“If anyone looks at the COVID-19 history, they will see that pregnant women infected with COVID were hit hard, preterm births, stillbirths, the women who lost their lives. It’s a painful history that I do not want to relive,” Canty said in a statement to CT Insider. “Pregnancy is an immunocompromised state. What are the recommendations so that pregnant people can protect themselves?”

Meanwhile, Dr. Rebecca Andrews, director of primary care at UConn Health, said vaccines for pregnant parents help protect all parties involved by keeping the mothers healthy while also introducing their babies to the antibodies. These maternal antibodies can protect infants in the first few weeks of life.

“Infants are delivered into this world with no immunity against the viruses we adults have been exposed to our entire lives. This puts them at a higher risk,” she said in a statement to CT Insider. “This is the reason that flu vaccination is recommended during pregnancy.”

Experts also worry about how insurance coverage for COVID-19 may change under this new guidance.

Typically, recommendations from the CDC help insurance companies decide what vaccines they should cover at no cost to patients. So the rollback on COVID-19 vaccines may lead to insurance companies changing their own coverage policies, thus impacting access, said Angela Mattie, professor of management and medical sciences in the schools of business and medicine at Quinnipiac University.

This would also leave patients then paying out-of-pocket for a service that was once covered, which can cost upwards of $200 per dose. These changes could ultimately lead to fewer vaccines being available as some providers and pharmacies may not stock them as much as they once did.

Lisa Cuchara, professor of biomedical sciences at Quinnipiac University, is concerned about the impact on patient-provider relationships and increase vaccine hesitancy. She said it’ll ultimately become harder for providers to continue recommending the vaccine to their patients, especially if insurers do not cover it, leading to patients missing out on essential parts of routine healthcare.

To her, the new recommendations are as part of an effort to change and control the narrative around health care and vaccines in particular with COVID-19 only being the start, especially when she thinks of Kennedy’s long history advocating against vaccines and lack of medical background.

“It’s very disappointing, and it’s frightening that we’re kind of entering, what I see is the equivalent of, like, the Dark Ages, where, information is being kind of controlled rather than being allowed that that truth comes out,” she said.

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