Consider This from NPR - The CDC changed its COVID vaccine guidance. What does that mean for you?

Episode Date: May 29, 2025

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new COVID recommendations this week, it raised questions among clinicians and patients:Will those shots still be available to people who want them — and will insurance cover it?NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, about the CDC's new guidelines for healthy children and pregnant women — and whether they could make it more difficult for these patients to get shots if they want them.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This week, the federal government released new guidelines on who should be vaccinated for COVID-19. Hi, everybody. I'm Robert F. Kennedy Jr., your HHS secretary. Kennedy, who leads the Department of Health and Human Services, announced the change in a one-minute video posted on X. I couldn't be more pleased to announce that as of today, the COVID vaccine for healthy children and healthy pregnant women has been removed from the CDC recommended immunization schedule. Also in the video, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Dr. Martin McCary. There's no evidence healthy kids need it today, and most countries have stopped recommending it for children.

The announcement comes after the FDA changed its approach to COVID vaccines, prioritizing immunizations for people at highest risk of serious complications. Some clinicians worry that changing these guidelines could put people at risk. Consider this, the COVID vaccine has saved lives. Now that the CDC has stopped recommending kids and pregnant women get the shot,

will the vaccine still be available to those who want it and will insurance cover it? From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. Know that fizzy feeling you get when you read something really good, watch the movie everyone's been talking about, or catch the show that the internet can't get over? At the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, we chase that feeling four times a week. We'll serve you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, and more. From low brow to high brow to the stuff in between, catch the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.

Imagine, if you will, a show from NPR that's not like NPR, a show that focuses not on the important but the stupid, which features stories about people smuggling animals in their pants and competent criminals in ridiculous science studies, and call it Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me because the good names were taken. Listen to NPR's Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. Yes, that is what it is called wherever you get your podcasts. It's Consider This from NPR. To understand how the federal government's changes to COVID vaccine policy will affect people's access

to the shots, we reached out to Dr. Peter J. Hotez. I helped develop a low cost COVID vaccine, 100 million doses in low and middle income countries. I develop other vaccines, so I'm a vaccine scientist. Dr. Hotez is the Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. He told me about his initial reaction to the new guidance.

Shock and disappointment because we know how important COVID vaccinations were both for pregnant women and for children, although for different reasons. In the case for pregnant women, first of all, as anyone who was working in an intensive care unit between 2020 and 2023 knows, pregnant women did not do well with COVID the virus. On average, they had much higher rates of severe illness requiring hospitalizations

or even intensive care unit monitoring, and sometimes they didn't survive. The data that we have so far suggests that if pregnant women were vaccinated against COVID, it had multiple benefits, predominantly including, you know, by one analysis suggesting a 90, 94% reduction in hospitalization for pregnant women who got vaccinated. So on top of that, getting vaccinated helped the newborn baby, the newborn infant who was, could also be exposed to COVID had much lower rates of hospitalization. So

to me, it makes no sense. So that's pregnant women. On the question of healthy children, FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty McCary said most countries have stopped recommending these vaccines for kids. Is that true? And if so, does it make sense for the US to follow? You know, I think one of the problems with the way the current leadership of the FDA looks at COVID vaccines is very much the way they portrayed it when they were talking heads on Fox News, which is they were only looking at one parameter, which was case fatality rates or infection mortality rates, which of course are much lower in children, although a significant number of children do die annually from COVID. But here's the part that they really missed the ball on,

which is the impact of vaccinating children for long COVID. There was last year a very important study showing significant benefit for both children and adolescents and both the Delta wave in 2021 and the BA1 Omicron wave in 2022 are preventing long COVID. So in their calculus, it doesn't look like the FDA at all

is considering the impact of long COVID. If somebody still wants the shot, despite the federal government's recommendation, is insurance likely to cover it? So this is where I'm gonna give you a pretty, I don't know the answer to your question answer, pretty long one, which is, I don't think we know. First of all, usually it's not the FDA signing off on the public health use of a vaccine.

This is why we have a Centers for Disease Control. This is why we have an advisory committee of immunization practices known as ACIP to make those recommendations. So the decision on how the vaccines are used are typically made in collaboration between ACIP and the CDC director. And that's often the basis for recommending the vaccine for the Vaccines for Children's Program, for the insurers, and all of that now has been bypassed. So I think we're in kind of an unknown territory now. What does it mean that the FDA has skirted all of that

or health and human services and just kind of made this unilateral decision which on top of that is not evidence-based. So question one, what do the pharmacy chains do? Do they continue to offer vaccines for pregnant women or for kids? What are the pediatric practices do? That's question one. The next question is going to be, will the insurance companies cover it?

And then if that weren't confusing enough, if you remember the leadership of the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. McCary, the FDA commissioner, and the head of CBER, the Center for Biologics Evaluation Research, Dr. Vinay Prasad, issued a guidance document where they specifically said that pregnancy is quote a risk factor for warranting, vaccinating individuals who might not otherwise qualify.

And just to be clear, if it isn't covered by insurance, it's pretty expensive, right? Well, it certainly can be. I know this, I was not very happy when Pfizer and Moderna, after they took a lot of US taxpayer dollars, they jacked up the price. I think at the last look it was around $130 a dose. So that is a significant expense for a lot of people. So bottom line, what is your advice for people who want to be as protected as they can be? Certainly, if for my daughter or loved one

who was pregnant and I'd be very, and there was a lot of COVID transmission, I would strongly suggest that they get vaccinated to protect themselves and protect their soon to be newborn infant. For an adolescent or a child, if you're concerned about long COVID, I would also recommend keeping up with annual immunizations. And I suppose the same applies for a healthy kid or adolescent who lives with an elderly person or an immunocompromised person or someone else who might be vulnerable. Yeah, and this is another consideration as well, both for those now made ineligible because

they're considered healthy, you have to consider the fact that we have many also adults in their 50s and early 60s or 40s who are taking care of older parents and are worried about transmitting the virus to their parents. There is some impact on reduction of transmission in terms of virus shedding. So that's yet another consideration. That is Dr. Peter J. Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development and Dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Thank you. Thank you. This episode was produced by Chymacnomy. It was edited by Tinbeat Ermias with audio engineering support from Tiffany Viracastro. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro. Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks?

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