CDC changes flu vaccine recommendation for children : Shots
A child receives a vaccine in a Florida pediatrician’s office in September 2025.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America
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Joe Raedle/Getty Images North America
Each year, Dr. Molly O’Shea’s pediatric practices held drive-thru clinics in the parking lot to make it as easy as possible for busy parents to quickly get their children their flu and COVID-19 vaccinations.
“We were doing big flu clinics. You know, hundreds – literally hundreds – of families would arrive at one time and when they rolled down their windows, we would give them the vaccine,” O’Shea says.
But those days are over.
“No more drive-thru. It’s over. We can’t do this anymore,” O’Shea said.
That’s because last spring, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. abandoned the recommendation that all children get routinely vaccinated against COVID. And the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention last week I did the same thing for six other childhood vaccinations, including the annual flu vaccine.
Instead, the CDC now says parents should talk with a health care provider about whether the vaccine is really necessary — something called “shared clinical decision-making.”
“The possibility of doing mass vaccination again in this way – I don’t see how that could be possible because the demands of shared decision-making require individual conversations with each family about each child,” says O’Sheawho runs the Birmingham Pediatrics + Wellness Center and the Campground Pediatrics + Wellness Center outside Detroit. She is also a spokesperson for the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“It’s disappointing,” O’Shea said.
There is now a lot of confusion and debate about what the new federal vaccination recommendations really mean. Some legal experts say drive-thru clinics are still possible.
“This is certainly not necessary due to the move towards shared clinical decision-making,” says Michelle Melloprofessor of law at Stanford Law School.
We therefore do not know exactly what the reaction of pediatricians will be.
But the new recommendations are causing widespread concern among doctors and parents, as well as infectious disease and public health experts.
“I think this is a good example of the confusion that comes with shared clinical decision-making,” the law professor says. Dorit Reisswho studies vaccine policy at UC Law, San Francisco.
Difficult flu season heightens concerns
The switch to the flu vaccine raises the most immediate alarm – coming during one of the worst flu seasons. in years.
“Doing this in the middle of a serious flu season is irresponsible,” says Dr. David Higginspediatrician at the University of Colorado who also represents the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Doctor visits for flu-like illnesses in the United States have reached their highest level in nearly 30 years, according to the CDC. Children are among those most at risk of serious complications from the flu.
The flu killed at least 288 children last year, according to the CDC. Most of the children who died last season were not vaccinated. The flu has already claimed the lives of at least nine children this season, according to the CDC.
“Unfortunately, we’ve had pediatric deaths before,” Higgins says. “We’ve hospitalized thousands of children. And in my own practice, I’ve seen children get incredibly sick from the flu. In the midst of all this, it’s dangerous to change the recommendation to make it seem like the flu vaccine recommendation is really uncertain.” Trump administration officials question whether this season is more severe than last year and dispute the benefits of the flu vaccine for children.
The Trump administration is downplaying the severity of this flu season
“Don’t let the media narrative mislead you: This season’s respiratory disease activity has been comparable to last season, even with a 15% increase in holiday travel according to TSA screening data,” Acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill wrote in a recent statement. post on.
THE new recommendations “means that the pediatric influenza vaccination decision should be based on individual patient characteristics rather than population-wide factors,” he wrote, adding that a new scientific study on childhood vaccination found “no randomized controlled trials demonstrating a reduction in community transmission, hospitalizations, or mortality in children with the pediatric vaccine.”
But independent experts dispute this claim. They point out that last year’s flu season was also particularly severe and that the flu vaccination of children is already slightly behind last year. They fear the changes will inevitably lead to fewer parents getting their children flu shots and more children getting sick, being hospitalized and dying.
“Other countries have gone further and said: Now is the time to get vaccinated. CDC? Not a word,” says Dr. Demeter Daskalakis, who led the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases at the CDC until he left the agency last August because of Kennedy’s policies.
Last year, the CDC canceled what it considered a highly successful campaign to encourage flu vaccinations. “I think all of this is dangerous,” he says.
