On Tuesday, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released an independent immunization schedule for children and adolescents, which includes guidance on COVID-19 vaccination that differs from CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) policy. It also features updates to recommendations on respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and flu.
The AAP recommends all young children ages 6-23 months get vaccinated against COVID-19, along with older children in certain risk groups, Melissa Jenco of the AAP wrote in a news release for the organization. “The guidance differs from federal policy that removes routine recommendations for healthy children but allows vaccination after a conversation with a health care provider.”
“It’s clear that we’re in a different place in the pandemic than we were four or five years ago in terms of risks to healthy older kids,” said Sean T. O’Leary, M.D., M.P.H., FAAP, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases (COID), in a statement. However, “the risk of hospitalization for young children and those with high-risk conditions remains pretty high.”
The COVID-19 hospitalization rate for children under 2 is the highest among all pediatric age groups. For children ages 6-23 months, this rate is similar to that of people aged 50-64 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Jenco reported. More than half of these young children hospitalized for COVID-19 did not have any underlying medical conditions.
Mike Stobbe reported for AP News that Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson Andrew Nixon responded, “The AAP is undermining national immunization policymaking with baseless political attacks.”
“The 95-year-old Itasca, Illinois-based organization has issued vaccination recommendations for children since the 1930s. In 1995, it synced its advice with recommendations made by the federal government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,” Stobbe wrote. “There have been a few small differences between AAP and CDC recommendations since then. For example, the AAP has advised that children get HPV vaccinations starting at age 9; the CDC says that’s OK, but has emphasized vaccinations at ages 11 and 12.”
Besides the AAP, other groups – including the Vaccine Integrity Project, a group of outside public health experts – have also been independently reviewing data on vaccines due to concerns about vaccine misinformation and access under current federal health leadership, CNN’s Amanda Sealy and Deidre McPhillips wrote. Furthermore, they noted, “Tension between AAP and those driving federal health policy has been running high for months, particularly around changes to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP.”
Amanda Friedman with Politico highlighted this by reporting that HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. accused the group (AAP) of engaging in a 'pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors' in a post on social media platform X. “The Trump Administration believes in free speech and AAP has a right to make its case to the American people. But AAP should follow the lead of HHS and disclose conflicts of interest, including its corporate entanglements and those of its journal—Pediatrics—so that Americans may ask whether the AAP’s recommendations reflect public health interest, or are, perhaps, just a pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors. AAP should also be candid with doctors and hospitals that recommendations that diverge from the CDC’s official list are not shielded from liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act,” Kennedy wrote.
AAP President Susan J. Kressly defended her group’s guidance in response, Friedman reported, stating they were “based only in the science, the needs of children, and the care that pediatricians have for the children in every community.”
