The US Government changes the number of childhood injections from 17 to 11

Editor’s Note: We’re bringing this piece forward because its relevance refuses to fade. Stories like this don’t belong in the archives, they belong in the conversation…

The US government has revised the rules, and the number of child vaccinations required. By downgrading the number of childhood shots from 17 to 11 shots, such as those against rotavirus, the flu, and hepatitis A.

Instead of being recommended to all children by default, those injections will now be recommended to only certain “high-risk” groups or will be accessible through “shared clinical decision-making” with parental consent.

The new recommendations put injections and immunizations into three categories:

• Those recommended for all children
• Those recommended for certain high-risk groups
• Those that can be given based on “shared clinical decision-making.”

Federal guidance still recommends that all children receive shots against 11 diseases: measles, mumps, rubella, polio, pertussis, tetanus, diphtheria, Haemophilus influenzae type B (Hib), pneumococcal disease, varicella (chickenpox), and human papillomavirus (HPV). However, HHS is recommending only one dose of HPV injection instead of the usual two, STAT reported.

The idea of shared clinical decision-making emphasizes that, if a child’s caregivers wish to give them a routine injection, they should first consult with a medical provider. This, however, does not sit well with all doctors.

One such doctor is Dr. Daniel Jernigan, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. “By making these vaccines a shared clinical decision-making, it introduces one more barrier that prevents a child from getting a life-saving vaccine,” Jernigan said.

Jernigan went on to point out, “While that idea may sound benign, it could sow confusion around which vaccines are considered effective and medically necessary, and it could introduce logistical hurdles to accessing vaccines.”

Meanwhile, injections against meningococcal disease and hepatitis A and B are also listed under the “shared decision-making” category, as are shots against rotavirus, COVID-19, and the flu.

“Abandoning recommendations for vaccines that prevent influenza, hepatitis, and rotavirus, and changing the recommendation for HPV without a public process to weigh the risks and benefits, will lead to more hospitalizations and preventable deaths among American children,” Michael Osterholm of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, told the Associated Press.

Stakeholders who benefited most from the distribution of injections were bracing for this announcement weeks in advance. In early December, Trump asked federal officials to compare the U.S. childhood injection schedule to that of “peer nations,” implying that other countries have better policies.

Around mid-December, it was reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), had intended to make the U.S. injection schedule more like that of Denmark, which recommends shots for only 11 diseases in its schedule.

Some experts have emphasized that the United States’ injection schedule has been rigorously tested and that the decision to change it was not made using new data on its safety or effectiveness. These same experts also noted that the policies of a small country like Denmark, with a population of only 6 million, would not serve the U.S., which has a population of roughly 340 million. “The truth is that while vaccine guidance is largely similar across developed countries, it may differ by country due to different disease threats, population demographics, health systems, costs, government structures, vaccine availability, and programs for vaccine delivery,” the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) noted.

For these injection stakeholders, this is bad news. For instance, medical societies, city and state health departments, and regional health alliances have turned down the CDC’s other injection policy changes, and the AAP has sued HHS for allegedly violating established rules around vaccine regulatory changes when the agency tweaked its COVID-19 injection guidance. “Today’s announcement by federal health officials to arbitrarily stop recommending numerous routine childhood immunizations is dangerous and unnecessary,” AAP president Dr. Andrew Racine said in a statement, according to the clinical news source Contemporary Pediatrics.

The childhood injection rules for Canada are mostly the same as those in the U.S., 17 shots or more. The information shared in this article leaves independent thinking parents, Canadians included asking themselves, whom shall I believe here. Highly paid injection stakeholders and Pediatrics, or my instincts? Why are they so bothered to the point of suing over injecting my children?