The American Academy of Pediatrics on Tuesday issued a recommendation that infants and toddlers receive the COVID-19 vaccine for this cold and flu season, breaking from the current recommendations set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to the AAP, all children between the ages of six and 23 months should receive the COVID-19 vaccine unless they have a known allergy to the vaccine or its ingredients. The organization also recommends a single dose for children older than 2 who are at high risk for COVID-19 and advises pregnant women to get vaccinated.
That’s a sharp break from the CDC’s current recommendation, changed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in May, to advise that pregnant women and parents decide for themselves, in consultation with their doctors, whether to vaccinate against COVID-19.
The AAP has made independent recommendations since the 1930s, well before the CDC was founded in 1946. But the guidance marks a critical moment in the rift between the children’s medical organization and Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again agenda for vaccine policy.
This spring, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, and rehired seven new members with more skeptical views on vaccine policy.
Following Kennedy’s ACIP reorganization, the AAP and 30 other medical professional associations withdrew from ACIP working groups, saying that ACIP’s recommendations had decreased legitimacy.
AAP president Dr. Susan Kressly told ABC News that the medical association made the move because of “the environment of misinformation, which makes it more important than ever that we provide clear and confident guidance, because the majority of American families really depend on us for this guidance.”
But it’s far from certain that the AAP’s new recommendations will change people’s minds about getting children vaccinated this fall.
A survey taken by the left-leaning health think tank KFF this month found that nearly six in 10 Americans did not plan on getting the updated COVID-19 vaccine ahead of the 2025-2026 cold and flu season. Only 22% of Republicans and 37% of Independents who responded to KFF’s survey said they planned to get this year’s COVID-19 vaccine.
The survey did not ask parents whether they would vaccinate their children, but COVID-19 vaccine uptake for children has historically been low.
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The CDC reported that, as of April, only 22% of adults in the last cold season received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, while only 13% of children under 18 were vaccinated.
For the entirety of the 2024-2025 cold and flu season, more than half of parents said that they will “probably or definitely” not get their children vaccinated for COVID-19.
