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Tag: Vaccine

  • Watch Live: Ousted CDC Director Susan Monarez testifies RFK Jr.

    Houry, who resigned after Monarez was removed, said that she made the decision to leave her post because “CDC leaders were reduced to rubber stamps, supporting policies not based on science and putting American lives at risk.”

    She criticized Kennedy’s leadership as head of Health and Human Services and accused him of censoring CDC science, politicizing its processes and stripping the agency’s leaders of independence.

    “I could not in good conscience remain under those conditions,” Houry said.

    She said the nation is on track to see significant increases in preventive diseases and declines in health “due to the secretary’s actions.”

    “Trust and transparency have been broken,” Houry said. “Here again, the problem is not too much science, but too little.”

    Houry detailed the flow of information within the Department of Health and Human Services under Kennedy’s tenure, including learning that Kennedy had changed the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine guidance through a social media post. She said CDC scientists have not seen the data or justification for those changes.

    Houry also said the secretary’s office ordered the removal of a scientific document on thimerosal, an organic compound used as a preservative in drug products, from the CDC’s website and allowed an “unvetted presentation” on the additive before ACIP.

    “That kind of last-minute alteration undermines confidence and the deliberations that follow, and is certainly not radical transparency,” Houry said.

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  • New CDC advisory panel members include more COVID vaccine critics

    Some of the newest members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine recommendations committee have questioned established medical research on immunizations and the COVID-19 pandemic.

    In a press release shared Monday, the CDC and Department of Health and Human Services said five new members were appointed to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP — just days ahead of a scheduled meeting that is likely to discuss the fall season’s COVID vaccines and more.  

    “These appointments reflect the commitment of Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to transparency, evidence-based science, and diverse expertise in guiding the nation’s immunization policies,” the release stated. But a look at the records of those selected shows some have voiced skepticism about vaccines and questioned evidence of their effectiveness.

    This isn’t the first time Kennedy, known for raising doubts about vaccines, has appointed people aligned with his views since taking over as HHS secretary. In June, he named eight new advisers after firing all 17 of the committee’s previous members. His appointments include several allies he has worked with closely over the years and some members with a history as vaccine critics. 

    Kennedy appointed the new members directly, breaking with the past practice of agency officials vetting potential experts before sending them to the secretary for approval.

    Here’s a look at the newest committee members:

    Catherine M. Stein

    Catherine M. Stein is an epidemiologist and professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her doctorate in epidemiology and biostatistics from the same university in 2004 and has a focus on tuberculosis, according to her faculty page on the school’s website.

    Stein has been openly critical of the U.S. response to COVID-19 and has downplayed the severity of the pandemic. According to Ohio Capital Journal, Stein told Ohio lawmakers that health officials were inflating COVID-19 death and hospitalization numbers. The journal also tied her to Health Freedom Ohio, which is affiliated with Children’s Health Defense, an anti-vaccine nonprofit founded by Kennedy as well as Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom, which the journal describes as an anti-vaccine advocacy group.

    Dr. Evelyn Griffin

    Dr. Evelyn Griffin is an obstetrician and gynecologist based in Louisiana, according to Baton Rouge General’s website. According to local reports, she has spoken against adding COVID-19 vaccines to the school immunization schedule as well as testified about adverse reactions of vaccines. 

    Hillary Blackburn

    Hillary Blackburn, a clinically trained pharmacist, is also the daughter-in-law of Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, according to Politico. 

    She is currently the director of medication access and affordability at online pharmacy company AscensionRx and hosts the podcast “Talk to Your Pharmacist,” the HHS release added. Her views on vaccines are unclear. 

    Dr. Kirk Milhoan

    Dr. Kirk Milhoan, a pediatric cardiologist based in Hawaii, is a senior fellow at Independent Medical Alliance, a group that showed support for Kennedy’s nomination, and the founder of For Hearts and Souls, a Christian medical missions organization.

    At a 2024 panel discussion on vaccine injuries convened by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and vocal COVID vaccine skeptic, Milhoan claimed COVID shots pose more harm than good. 

    According to local news reports, he was also investigated by the Hawaii Medical Board in 2022 for disseminating medical misinformation but charges were eventually dropped. 

    Dr. Raymond Pollak

    Dr. Raymond Pollak is a transplant surgeon and hospital whistleblower. In 1999 he reported the University of Illinois at Chicago’s hospital was diagnosing patients as sicker than they were to boost the number of transplants performed there, according to court documents.

    Pollak’s views on vaccines are unclear.

    Sara Moniuszko

    Sara Moniuszko is a health and lifestyle reporter at CBSNews.com. Previously, she wrote for USA Today, where she was selected to help launch the newspaper’s wellness vertical. She now covers breaking and trending news for CBS News’ HealthWatch.

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  • States Are Taking Steps To Ease Access To COVID-19 Vaccines As They Await Federal Recommendation – KXL

    (AP) The governors of Arizona, Illinois, Maine and North Carolina on Friday joined the growing list of Democratic officials who have signed orders intended to ensure most residents can receive COVID-19 vaccines at pharmacies without individual prescriptions.

    Unlike past years, access to COVID-19 vaccines has become complicated in 2025, largely because federal guidance does not recommend them for nearly everyone this year as it had in the past.

    Here’s a look at where things stand.

    Pharmacy chain says the shots are available in most states without individual prescriptions
    CVS Health, the biggest pharmacy chain in the U.S., says its stores are offering the shots without an individual prescription in 41 states as of midday Friday.

    But the remaining states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, Oregon, Utah and West Virginia, plus the District of Columbia — require individual prescriptions under the company’s interpretation of state policies.

    Arizona, Maine and North Carolina are likely to come off that list as the new orders take effect there.

    “I will not stand idly by while the Trump Administration makes it harder for Maine people to get a vaccine that protects their health and could very well save their life,” Maine Gov. Janet Mills said in the statement. “Through this standing order, we are stepping up to knock down the barriers the Trump Administration is putting in the way of the health and welfare of Maine people.”

    Democratic governors have been taking action
    At least 14 states — 12 with Democratic governors, plus Virginia, where Republican Glenn Youngkin is governor — have announced policies this month to ease access.

    In some of the states that have expanded access — including Delaware and New Jersey earlier in the week and Illinois on Friday — at least some pharmacies were already providing the shots broadly.

    Friday’s orders are expected to change the policy in all three states where they were put into place.

    North Carolina’s orders were narrower than most. They apply to everyone age 65 and over and people who are at least 18 and have a risk factor. Other adults would still need prescriptions. Officials said the order takes effect immediately, but that all pharmacies might not have supplies on hand right away.

    While most Republican-controlled states have not changed vaccine policy this month, the inoculations are still available there under existing policies.

    In addition to the round of orders from governors, boards of pharmacy and other officials, four states — California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington — have announced an alliance to make their own vaccine recommendations. Of those, only Oregon doesn’t currently allow the shots in pharmacies without individual prescriptions.

    Vaccines have become politically contentious
    In past years, the federal government has recommended the vaccines to all Americans above the age of 6 months.

    This year, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved them for people age 65 and over but said they should be used only for children and younger adults who have a risk factor such as asthma or obesity.

    That change came as U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy fired the entire Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices in June, accusing of them of being too closely aligned with the companies that make the vaccines. The replacements include vaccine skeptics.

    Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, framed her order Friday as “protecting the health care freedom” of people in the state.

    One state has taken another stance on vaccines
    Florida’s surgeon general, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, announced this month that the state could become the first to eliminate requirements that children have a list of vaccinations.

    Since then, though, the state health department said that the change likely wouldn’t take effect until December and that without legislative action, only some vaccines — including for chickenpox — would become optional. The measles and polio shots would remain mandatory.

    Jordan Vawter

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  • NIH whistleblower says she was ousted after clashing with Trump officials on vaccines

    The upheaval sparked by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vaccine skepticism has now spread beyond the CDC to the agency that funds vaccine research. Dr. Jeanne Marazzo, former acting director for the National Institutes of Health, says she was ousted after speaking up about the importance of childhood flu vaccines.

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  • What’s at stake over ending vaccine mandates

    Florida’s surgeon general has confirmed his office did not conduct any analysis to project how removing school vaccine requirements would impact children in the state. The rollback of some vaccine rules is expected to take effect in the next 90 days. It comes as vaccination rates nationwide are decreasing. Dr. Celine Gounder joins to discuss what’s at stake.

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  • Former CDC physicians speak out against new vaccine policies

    At the end of summer, Congress is often sleepy, and slowly gets back to work. But this past week was an exception. On Capitol Hill, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. arrived, and the controversial Health and Human Services Secretary sparked a reckoning over public health in America.

    At a hearing before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday, Kennedy defended the Trump administration’s policies: “We at HHS are enacting a once-in-a-generation shift from a sick-care system, to a true health care system that tackles the root causes of chronic disease,” he said.

    Tempers ran hot at the hearing. Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) said, “This is not a podcast. It is the American people’s health that is on the line here.”

    Democrats rebuked Kennedy, perhaps the most high-profile member of President Donald Trump’s cabinet. Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) asked Kennedy, “When were you lying, sir – when you told this committee that you were not anti-vax? Or when you told Americans that there’s no safe and effective vaccine?”

    To which Kennedy replied, “Both things are true.”

    There were Republicans who offered broad support for Kennedy. Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Ida.) said, “President Trump and Secretary Kennedy have made a steadfast commitment to make America healthy again.”

    Yet some Republicans notably did push Kennedy on how his long-standing opposition to vaccine mandates is affecting policy, and on Kennedy’s doubts about the safety of various vaccines. Sen. John Barasso (R-Wyo.) said, “There are real concerns that safe, proven vaccines like measles, like hepatitis B and others, could be in jeopardy.”

    The committee room standoff had been brewing for days. On August 27, the government announced new restrictions on eligibility for COVID vaccinations. That decision prompted some health organizations to warn the policy could cause confusion.

    That same day, the Trump White House said Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who had just been confirmed by the Senate weeks earlier, was fired.

    The Trump White House stood by Secretary Kennedy’s sweeping changes, and by the firing. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said of Monarez, “She was not aligned with President Trump’s mission to make America healthy again.”

    In a statement to “Sunday Morning,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said, “The White House maintains full confidence in Secretary Kennedy’s leadership at HHS to advance President Trump’s MAHA agenda. With Operation Warp Speed’s unprecedented success delivering COVID-19 vaccines in record time, President Trump proved that it’s possible to shake up the status quo of our broken and bureaucratic public health system to deliver real results for the American people. Now the second Trump administration is building on this record and experience to restore Gold Standard Science as the guiding principle of health decision-making at HHS to Make America Healthy Again.”

    In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Susan Monarez has written that she was pressured to “compromise science itself” – and to sign off on people who “have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric.”

    This turbulence has put Kennedy, who was a key Trump ally during last year’s campaign, in the spotlight.

    Asked whether there has been pressure within the Republican Party to stand by Kennedy, Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul said, “Nobody’s pressured me or ever called me on it. I sort of speak my mind. And these are long-standing beliefs for me.”

    Paul, an ophthalmologist, supports Kennedy, and lays blame on scientists – not skeptics – for worries about vaccine safety. “All the doubt over vaccines is – there might be some doubt coming from those who don’t want you to take a vaccine, but quite a bit of doubt is coming from the establishment that I believe is authoritarian in nature,” said Paul. “You don’t care whether they tell you what to do. You should just do what you’re told. We know better than you.”

    But some who have worked at the highest level are fighting back against criticism, and are sounding an alarm.

    “A significant distrust of vaccines”

    Four CDC officials – Doctors Jennifer Layden, Daniel Jernigan, Debra Houry, and Demetre Daskalakis – all have resigned in recent days, some citing Secretary Kennedy’s vaccine policies, others citing the upheaval at the CDC, which provides crucial health guidance nationwide.

    And all four expressed concerns about their resulting trust in CDC information about vaccines and vaccine safety data. “It’s why I left; I’m very concerned,” said Dr. Daskalakis. “We’ve already crossed the line. The COVID recommendations for children and pregnant women are completely not based in any evidence that world experts agree on.”

    I asked, “You know Secretary Kennedy would push back on that; what would you tell him?”

    “Ah, easy,” Daskalakis replied. “The recommendation is that there should be no healthy kids that get the vaccine; it should only be in kids with underlying conditions. Kids that are six-months-old, 56% of them that are admitted to the hospital have no underlying condition. So, by not offering the vaccine to parents who are willing to do it, those kids that could have been protected won’t be.”

    Asked how he would label Kennedy and his view of vaccines, Dr. Daniel Jernigan said, “I think he has a significant distrust of vaccines. I don’t know that he’s driving a get-rid-of-vaccines agenda. It’s more death by a thousand cuts, death by a thousand questions, calling into question data that has been accepted for many, many years, and simply that calling it into question brings into people’s minds that, ‘Maybe I shouldn’t get that vaccine.’”

    Dr. Debra Houry said that when Kennedy began at HHS, “I read his books. I wanted to better understand his research and his background on it. So, we were open, you know, to having those discussions.”

    In an additional statement to “Sunday Morning,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said:

    “Americans haven’t forgotten how ‘the science’ was politicized and weaponized during the COVID era by unaccountable ‘health officials’ to push intrusive mandates and stifle any semblance of the skepticism that actual scientific inquiry is based on. The Trump administration is committed to restoring evidence-based, Gold Standard Science and answering the questions that Americans haven’t been allowed to ask to restore trust, confidence, and accountability in our public health bodies.”

    Asked what the cost to Americans would be of doctors and other officials leaving the CDC, Dr. Jennifer Layden said, “We’re talking about the whole public health infrastructure of our nation. And I think when we start to see (and we will) outbreaks that normally don’t happen – more food-borne outbreaks, Legionella outbreaks, rising measles cases – people will start to care. That may take time for us to see some of those negative consequences, but that’s what the ripple effect of all this will do across our nation.”

    In fact, ripple effects are already apparent.

    “Diseases don’t obey borders”

    Just this past week, Florida’s Republican governor announced plans to eliminate all childhood vaccine requirements.

    Meanwhile, West Coast Democratic governors who oppose Secretary Kennedy’s policies are moving fast to protect vaccine programs in their states.

    I asked Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon who served in the Biden administration, “What is the consequence for the country when you have such a differentiation? It’s splintered.”

    “It’s severely splintered, and I’m very worried about it,” Gawandea replied, “because diseases don’t obey borders.

    For Gawande, Kennedy’s actions could upend not only federal agencies, but America’s standing in global health. “There isn’t always consensus, for sure, among our own medical community,” he said, “but we generally have been able to come together enough to be able to say, ‘Here is where we can assure getting – whether it’s COVID boosters, and making sure we don’t leave out the people who are most in need of vaccination – to making sure we’re not abandoning our childhood immunization. Other countries around the world are baffled by our now falling into a civil war over whether the discoveries that have saved the world mattered.”

    Later this month, the CDC’s vaccine advisory board – now featuring Kennedy appointees – will meet to decide future guidelines.

    At the end of the day, Gawande says, “Trust helps assuage doubt.”

    But, I asked, “Is trust still possible in this environment?”

    “Trust is still possible,” said Gawande, “but it is not possible while we have leaders who actively drive chaos, who actively are trying to create uncertainty and break down trust. But ultimately, people have to choose the leaders who have the track record of demonstrating better outcomes. And those leaders are scientists, health professionals, and others who have demonstrated over years that they actually get you better results.”

          
    For more info:

         
    Story produced by Ed Forgotson and Jack Weingart. Editor: Carol Ross. 

          
    See also: 



    Key takeaways from tense RFK Jr. Senate hearing

    04:26

    Robert Costa

    Robert Costa is a national correspondent for “CBS News Sunday Morning” and chief Washington analyst for CBS News.

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  • Vaccine chaos: Even some vulnerable seniors can’t get COVID shots amid spiking cases

    Seniors in some parts of the country say they are being denied COVID-19 vaccinations amid an ongoing spike in cases, leading to rising frustration over new Trump administration policies that are making it harder to get the shots.

    Matthew D’Amico, 67, of New York City, said a Walgreens declined to administer COVID-19 vaccines to him and his 75-year-old wife on Friday because they didn’t have a prescription. They’re trying to get vaccinated ahead of a trip.

    “I can’t believe we can’t get” the vaccine, D’Amico said in an interview. “I’ve been inoculated a number of times and never had to get a prescription. And it’s just very frustrating that this is where we are.”

    He’s not alone in his exasperation. Under the leadership of the vaccine skeptic Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., federal agencies have effectively made it more difficult to get vaccinated against COVID-19 this year. The Food and Drug Administration has only “approved” COVID-19 vaccines for those age 65 and up, as well as younger people with underlying health conditions.

    That means across the country, people younger than 65 interested in getting the COVID-19 vaccine must now either consult with a healthcare provider or “attest” to a pharmacy that they have an underlying health condition. It’s a potential hurdle that can make getting the vaccine more difficult and, some health experts worry, prompt even more Americans to eschew getting vaccinated.

    As D’Amico can attest, though, being part of a group for whom the COVID vaccine is “approved” doesn’t necessarily guarantee easy access.

    “For me to go to my primary [healthcare provider] now and get a prescription, it’s just kind of ridiculous,” D’Amico said.

    At least some people younger than 65 are encountering pharmacy staff asking probing questions about their medical conditions.

    That happened Friday at a CVS in Orange County, according to 34-year-old Alex Benson, who takes medication that can suppress his immune system.

    Besides just protecting himself, he wanted to get vaccinated as he has family members who are at high risk should they get COVID — his mother is immunocompromised, and his mother-in-law had open-heart surgery on Thursday night.

    Benson said an employee asked why he thought he was eligible for the vaccine.

    “They asked me for either a prescription or they wanted to know … why I felt I needed the vaccination,” Benson said. At one point, a staffer offered to call his doctor to get an authorization for the vaccine.

    Benson said he was alarmed by the questions, and started to “feel kind of some desperation to plead my case to the pharmacist.” Another CVS staffer later came over and said further answers weren’t necessary and simply attesting he was eligible was good enough. He eventually got the vaccine.

    Still, he felt the experience was dismaying.

    “I think easy access should be the policy,” Benson said. “I tend not to get too political, but it seems just rather juxtaposed to me that an anti-regulation administration is using regulation in this way. They’re supposed to be removing barriers to healthcare.”

    The vaccine chaos comes as COVID-19 is either increasing or starting to hit its late summer peak. According to data released Friday, there are now 14 states with “very high” levels of coronavirus detected in their wastewater — California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Indiana, South Carolina, Alabama, Louisiana, Connecticut, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Hawaii and Alaska, as well as the District of Columbia.

    Dr. Elizabeth Hudson, the regional physician chief of infectious diseases for Kaiser Permanente Southern California, said data continue to show an increase in coronavirus cases.

    “Over this past week, we’ve seen an increase in the number of outpatient COVID cases, and even a smattering of inpatient cases,” Hudson said. “It appears that we may be nearing the top of the wave, but it may be another two weeks or so until we truly know if we’re there.”

    The rate at which coronavirus lab tests are confirming infection also continues to rise statewide and in the Los Angeles area. For the week ending Aug. 30, California’s COVID test positivity rate was 12.83%, up from 7.05% for the week ending Aug. 2. In L.A. County, the positive test rate was 14.83%, up from 9.33%.

    Other data, however, suggest some areas may have reached their summer COVID peak.

    In Orange County, the COVID positive test rate was 13.1%. That’s below the prior week’s rate of 18%, but still higher than the rate for the week that ended Aug. 2, which was 10.8%.

    In San Francisco, the test positivity rate has been hovering around 9% for the last week of reliable data available. It’s up from 7% a month earlier.

    In addition, wastewater data in L.A. County show coronavirus levels declined slightly from the prior week.

    “It’s too early to know if this decrease in wastewater viral concentrations is the first sign that COVID-19 activity is peaking or is regular variation typical of this data source,” the L.A. County Department of Public Health said.

    COVID hospital admissions in California are increasing — with the latest rate of 3.93 admissions per 100,000 residents, up from 2.38.

    But they remain relatively low statewide and in L.A. County. The number of L.A. County residents seeking care for COVID-related illness, or who have been hospitalized, “is quite a bit lower than during summer surges in 2023 and 2024,” the public health department said.

    A relatively mild summer wave, however, could mean that the annual fall-and-winter COVID wave might be stronger. In July, the state Department of Public Health said that scientists anticipate California would see either a stronger summer COVID wave or a more significant winter wave.

    The current confusion over federal COVID vaccine policy has been exacerbated by the chaos at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where Kennedy earlier this year fired everyone on the influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, and orchestrated the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez just 29 days after she was confirmed to the post by the Senate.

    Some of Kennedy’s handpicked replacements on the ACIP have criticized vaccines and spread misinformation, according to the Associated Press. And the new interim CDC director — Jim O’Neill, a Kennedy deputy — is a critic of health regulations and has no training in medicine or healthcare, the AP reported.

    The CDC hasn’t issued its own recommendations on who should get vaccinated, and that inaction has resulted in residents of a number of states needing to get prescriptions from a healthcare provider for at least the next couple of weeks. In some cases, that’s true even for seniors, as D’Amico found out.

    As of Friday, CVS said people need a prescription to get a COVID-19 vaccine, sometimes depending on their age, in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia, as well as the District of Columbia.

    CVS couldn’t even offer the COVID-19 at its pharmacies in Nevada as of Friday; they were only available at the company’s MinuteClinic sites, according to spokesperson Amy Thibault.

    CVS said it expects to offer COVID-19 vaccines without prescriptions at its pharmacies in New Mexico, Nevada, New York and Pennsylvania “soon,” due to recent regulatory changes in each state.

    “Right now, all patients in all states need to attest to being eligible for the vaccine in order to schedule an appointment online,” Thibault said. If an adult says they have no underlying health conditions, but do have a prescription from a healthcare provider for “off-label” use of the vaccine, they can get the shot, Thibault confirmed.

    On Thursday, Hawaii joined California, Washington and Oregon in launching the West Coast Health Alliance: an interstate compact meant to provide science-based immunization guidance as an alternative to the CDC.

    “Together, these states will provide evidence-based immunization guidance rooted in safety, efficacy, and transparency — ensuring residents receive credible information free from political interference,” according to a statement from Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office.

    The statement suggested that the Trump administration was essentially “dismantling” the CDC.

    “The absence of consistent, science-based federal leadership poses a direct threat to our nation’s health security,” the statement said. “To protect the health of our communities, the West Coast Health Alliance will continue to ensure that our public health strategies are based on best available science.”

    It was not immediately clear, however, whether the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance would make it easier for people to get COVID-19 vaccines at the nation’s largest pharmacy retailers, where many people get their shots.

    Mainstream medical groups, such as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, are also offering their own recommendations to advise individuals and families on what vaccines they should get.

    Rong-Gong Lin II

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  • Washington State Issues Standing Order For COVID-19 Vaccine – KXL


    A medical staff member prepares the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine at Tudor Ranch in Mecca, Calif. on Jan. 21, 2021. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

    OLYMPIA, Wash. – The Washington State Department of Health has issued a new Standing Order for the COVID-19 vaccine. The state says it’s aimed at expanding access and reaffirming the state’s recommendation that everyone 6 months and older stay up to date on their vaccinations.

    The order allows most residents to receive the COVID-19 vaccine at pharmacies or clinics without needing an individual prescription. The vaccine remains covered by most private insurance plans, Apple Health, and through Washington’s Adult and Childhood Vaccine Programs.

    The DOH’s guidance echoes recommendations from major medical organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the American Academy of Family Physicians. It also reaffirms the vaccine’s safety and importance, particularly for pregnant people and young children.

    The state’s move follows the formation of the West Coast Health Alliance, a multistate coalition announced earlier this week. Washington joined Oregon and California on Sept. 3, with Hawaii joining a day later. The alliance aims to ensure public health decisions are grounded in science and shielded from political interference.

    Some health care providers have already received doses of the 2025–26 COVID-19 vaccine. However, availability remains limited in many areas as additional supplies are expected to arrive later in September or October. The DOH encourages residents to contact their health care provider or local pharmacy to confirm availability and make appointments.

    More about:


    Grant McHill

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  • RFK Jr. said all can get the COVID-19 vaccine. Is that true?

    When U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. testified before the Senate Finance Committee on Sept. 4, several senators criticized him for restricting the COVID-19 vaccine after promising in November he wouldn’t “take away anybody’s vaccines.” 

    “Did you hold up a big sign saying that you were lying when you said that?” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., asked Kennedy. 

    On Aug. 27, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration updated its COVID-19 vaccine guidance, limiting the groups of people approved to get the updated shot to anyone age 65 and older and any person 6 months and older who has at least one underlying health condition that increases their risk of severe COVID-19 infection.

    Kennedy pushed back, “Anybody can get the booster,” he said, later adding that “it’s not recommended for healthy people.”

    Warren said, “If you don’t recommend, then the consequence of that in many states is that you can’t walk into a pharmacy and get one. It means insurance companies don’t have to cover the $200 or so cost.” 

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    Warren and Kennedy continued to speak over each other debating the vaccine’s availability. 

    “It depends on the states,” Kennedy said. “But they can still get it. Everybody can get it. Everybody can get it, senator.”

    Asked for evidence, the Health and Human Services Department pointed us to an Aug. 27 X post from Kennedy that said, “These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors.” 

    Kennedy’s blanket statement to senators is misleading and premature.

    Under current guidance, healthy people under 65 years old might need a doctor’s prescription to get the shot. If they successfully get a prescription, they may need to pay out of pocket. 

    Further, whether the vaccine is available at pharmacies and covered by insurance is largely dependent on a vaccine panel that has so far issued no recommendations.

    What was the status quo for years — that the majority of Americans, regardless of age, could easily make an appointment at their local pharmacy for the vaccine at little to no out-of-pocket cost — is no longer guaranteed in the 2025-26 season.  

    FDA limited COVID-19 vaccine approval, CDC has yet to issue guidance

    The FDA’s approval is not the only step in the process of making vaccines available to the public.

    The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, a panel of independent experts that guides vaccine policy, has not voted on or issued current guidance. Typically, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends vaccines based on the panel’s guidance.  

    And that guidance affects insurance coverage and vaccine access. Federal law requires that most health insurance plans fully cover vaccines recommended by the CDC. Some states also require these recommendations before they allow vaccines to be offered over-the-counter at pharmacies. 

    On June 9, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the CDC’s immunization advisory committee and replaced some with new members, many of whom have expressed antivaccine views. CDC Director Susan Monarez was fired Aug. 27 over what Monarez described as a dispute about vaccine policy. 

    According to the CDC’s website, the advisory panel is scheduled to meet Sept. 18 to 19. 

    Whether people in FDA-approved groups can get the vaccine over the counter depends on the state 

    People in the FDA-approved groups should be able to schedule vaccinations as soon as authorized health care providers receive it, likely in the next few weeks.

    Even if you are in these approved groups, where you can get the COVID-19 vaccine varies by state. By law, pharmacies in certain states won’t be able to offer the vaccine or will only administer it with a doctor’s prescription until the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel issues its recommendations.

    That means even though the FDA has issued its approval for some groups, in 18 states and Washington D.C., “pharmacists cannot administer it because it isn’t on the CDC immunization schedule yet,” Brigid Groves, American Pharmacists Association vice president of professional affairs, previously told PolitiFact.

    As of Sept. 4, the scheduling apps for Walgreens and CVS notified patients in some locations that they could not schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment because of state restrictions, inventory or the need for a prescription. 

    People not in FDA-approved categories may require off-label prescriptions

    People who are not in the FDA’s approved group are not banned from getting the COVID-19 vaccine, per se. But accessing the vaccine will likely require navigating some barriers. 

    Doctors can legally prescribe a COVID-19 vaccine for people who fall outside the FDA categories.

    That’s true for adults and children — and the practice of prescribing medications and vaccines for “off-label” use is fairly common in pediatrics, Dr. William Schaffner, Vanderbilt University Medical Center professor of infectious diseases, previously told PolitiFact.

    That requires making and paying for a doctor’s appointment, and finding a doctor willing to prescribe it off-label. 

    Depending on ACIP’s guidance, pharmacists might be able to vaccinate people not in an FDA-approved group through a process called “shared clinical decision making.” 

    That means, for example, “If you were 52 years old and otherwise healthy, but you nonetheless wanted to get the vaccine, you could discuss that with your doctor — shared clinical decision making — and you could receive the vaccine,” Schaffner said. 

    Pharmacists are considered clinicians who can conduct that shared decision making, Groves said. 

    But again, without CDC recommendations, “We don’t know if that provision is still there,” Schaffner said. 

    Vaccine insurance coverage is dependent on CDC guidance that is not yet available

    Insurance coverage for the vaccine is still up in the air, too, and will largely depend on what the CDC recommends. 

    Insurance coverage is more probable for people in an FDA-approved category. But, if the CDC recommendations include giving vaccines to healthy people through the shared clinical decision making process, insurance companies will generally honor that, Schaffner said.

    COVID-19 vaccines cost about $142, according to the CDC’s price lists. It’s unclear whether that would be the out-of-pocket cost for patients receiving a COVID-19 vaccine not covered by insurance. 

    Our ruling

    Kennedy said “everybody can get” the COVID-19 vaccine. 

    The FDA limited the groups of people who are eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, which has already diminished the shot’s drugstore availability in some states. People who are not in those groups aren’t banned from getting the shot, but are likely to face additional barriers. For example, people may need a doctor to prescribe the vaccine “off-label,” making the process more challenging and potentially more costly. 

    Kennedy’s blanket statement also is premature.

    A CDC vaccine panel has not issued recommendations for the vaccine. The group’s guidance might affect insurance coverage and over-the-counter access.

    The statement contains an element of truth — the vaccine has not been banned and some people are approved to get it. But it ignores critical facts about the barriers others could face accessing and paying for it. We rate it Mostly False.

    PolitiFact Staff Writer Madison Czopek contributed to this report.

    RELATED: Can I get an updated COVID-19 vaccine this year? Is it available yet? Will insurance cover it?

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  • Defiant RFK Jr. questions vaccine data, defends record under bipartisan Senate grilling

    Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s Health secretary and a longtime vaccine skeptic, struck a defiant tone Thursday as he faced bipartisan criticism over changes he has made to reorganize federal health agencies and vaccine policies, telling senators that he is determined to “eliminate politics from science.”

    In the testy appearance before the Senate Finance Committee, Kennedy repeatedly defended his record in heated exchanges with senators from both parties and questioned data that show the effectiveness of vaccines. In turn, senators accused him of taking actions that contradict his promise seven months earlier that he would do “nothing that makes it difficult or discourages people from taking vaccines.”

    “Secretary Kennedy, in your confirmation hearing you promised to uphold the highest standard for vaccines. Since then, I’ve grown deeply concerned,” Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, a top-ranking Senate Republican and a physician, said during the hearing.

    Kennedy forcefully denied that he has limited access to vaccines and defended his record in restoring trust in federal healthcare agencies under the umbrella of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

    “They deserve the truth and that’s what we’re going to give them for the first time in the history of the agency,” Kennedy told senators.

    From the outset, it was expected that Democrats would slam Kennedy’s record. Some of them called on him to resign and accused him of politicizing federal health policy decisions. Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the committee’s ranking Democrat, said he believed Kennedy’s “primary interest is to take vaccines away from Americans.”

    “During his confirmation process, he claimed to be pro-safety and pro-science, but his actions reveal a steadfast commitment to elevating junk science and fringe conspiracies,” Wyden said.

    Criticism during the three-hour hearing also came from Republicans, in a rare rebuke of a Trump administration official from a Republican-led committee.

    Three Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who was key in advancing Kennedy’s nomination, joined Democrats in criticizing Kennedy’s actions. Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina at one point told Kennedy that remarks he gave to the panel during the confirmation process “seem to contradict” what he is doing now as Health secretary.

    The decorum usually associated with congressional hearings at times fell by the wayside. Kennedy and senators repeatedly shouted over one another, accused each other of lying and engaged in name-calling. In one instance, Kennedy told Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) that she was engaging in “crazy talk” when asked about vaccine access. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) called Kennedy a “charlatan.”

    Thursday’s session marked a peak of bipartisan frustration over a string of controversial decisions by Kennedy that have thrown his department into disarray. Kennedy dismissed an entire advisory panel responsible for vaccine recommendations and replaced its members with known vaccine skeptics. He withdrew $500 million in funding earmarked for developing vaccines against respiratory viruses. And, just last week, he ousted the newly appointed director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention following disagreements over vaccine policy.

    In an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, Susan Monarez, the former CDC director, wrote that she was forced out after she declined to recommend people “who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” to an influential vaccine advisory panel.

    At the hearing, Kennedy said Monarez was lying and that the shakeup at the CDC was “absolutely necessary.” He added that he fired her because he asked her if she was trustworthy, and she told him, “no.”

    “We depoliticized it and put great scientists on it from a very diverse group, very, very pro-vaccine,” he said.

    In questioning, however, members of his own party pressed him on his support for vaccines. At one point, Cassidy, a physician, read an email from a physician friend who said patients 65 and older need a prescription to get a COVID-19 shot.

    “I would say effectively we are denying people vaccines,” Cassidy said.

    “You’re wrong,” Kennedy responded.

    Under new federal guidelines approved last week, adults younger than 65 who are otherwise healthy would need to consult with a healthcare provider before getting the shot. The move has made it more difficult for people to access the COVID-19 vaccine.

    During the hearing, Kennedy said he could not say whether the COVID-19 vaccines had prevented any deaths, citing “data chaos” within the federal agency.

    “I have no idea how many lives it saved, but it saved quite a few,” he said.

    Researchers, however, have estimated that nearly 20 million lives were saved by the COVID-19 vaccines in their first year of public availability.

    In that same exchange, Cassidy asked Kennedy if he believed President Trump deserved a Nobel Prize for his administration’s work on Operation Warp Speed, the initiative that sped the development of the COVID-19 vaccine and treatments.

    “Absolutely,” Kennedy said.

    Cassidy said he was surprised at his answer because he believes Kennedy is trying to restrict access to the COVID-19 vaccine. He also expressed dismay at Kennedy’s decision to cancel $500 million in contracts to develop vaccines using mRNA technology, which Cassidy said was key to the operation.

    Kennedy’s position on vaccines has reverberated beyond Capitol Hill.

    Ahead of the hearing, more than 1,000 employees at the health agency and national health organizations called on Kennedy to resign. Seemingly in support of Kennedy’s direction, Florida announced plans to become the first state to end all vaccines mandated, including for schoolchildren. And three Democratic-led states — California, Washington and Oregon — have created an alliance to counter turmoil within the federal public health agency.

    The states said the focus of their health alliance will be on ensuring that the public has access to credible information about the safety and efficacy of vaccines.

    Almost as if in a parallel universe, Kennedy told senators on Thursday that his goal was to achieve the same thing, after facing hours of criticism on his vaccine policies.

    “I am not going to sign on to something if I can’t make it with scientific certainty,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I am antivax, it just means I am pro-science.”

    Ana Ceballos

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  • No, school vaccine mandates are not like slavery

    Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo said the state’s health department will end “every single” school vaccine mandate, which includes many routine children’s immunizations.

    Ladapo, who has a history of spreading inaccurate vaccine claims, equated the state’s vaccine requirements with slavery. 

    “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Ladapo said during a Sept. 3 press conference in Valrico with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. “Who am I as a man standing here right now to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body? I don’t have that right.”

    Ladapo mentioned enslavement again moments later: “If we want to move toward a perfect world, a better world, we can’t do it by enslaving people in terrible philosophies and taking away people’s freedoms. That’s not the path … we have to find alternative pathways.” 

    Florida has exemptions from vaccine participation; enslaved people had no exemptions or options. (Some slaves were able to self-emancipate but this was rare. Self-emancipation was extremely difficult and dangerous; people who attempted risked severe punishment, enslavement or death.)

    Experts in public health called Ladapo’s statement false and inflammatory.

    “Slavery is the violent ownership of people,” Tony Yang, a George Washington University health policy professor, said. “School-entry vaccination rules are safety conditions for participating in shared spaces — and they include due-process protections and exemptions.” 

    Dorit Reiss, a University of California-San Francisco law professor who studies vaccine policy issues, including mandates, agreed.

    “Regulation in public health is not akin to slavery,” Reiss said. “The opposite of slavery is not ‘you can do whatever you want in a state regardless of the risk you pose to others.’ Free societies have many regulations to protect others — for example, we require people to drive on one side of the street; we regulate to keep our water clean. Both of these limit liberty — without being slavery.” 

    Sign up for PolitiFact texts

    Most public health experts agree that vaccines are most effective at halting disease spread when there is widespread uptake. Vaccines also have been used to eradicate or significantly reduce deadly and debilitating diseases, such as smallpox and polio.

    Pediatricians told us that states have school vaccine requirements because they help maintain high coverage in places where contagious diseases spread easily, protecting those who are too young, or medically unable to be vaccinated.

    The Florida Department of Health did not respond to PolitiFact’s request for comment.

    Florida law on school vaccine requirements

    State law currently requires students in public and private schools from daycare through 12th grade to have specific immunizations, unless they obtain a valid exemption. The list includes routine childhood immunizations such as DTaP, polio, measles-mumps-rubella, chickenpox and hepatitis B. 

    Parents can obtain religious exemptions from their county health department if vaccination conflicts with their religious beliefs or practices.

    They can also obtain medical exemptions from health providers who have to state that a child cannot be fully immunized with “valid clinical reasoning or evidence, according to the state’s health department website. This exemption can be temporary or permanent.

    Around 89% of students entering kindergarten in the state are immunized, according to Florida health data, a decline from 94% in 2017. 

    History and science of U.S. school vaccine requirements

    Massachusetts required smallpox vaccines in 1855, becoming the first state to mandate vaccines.

    Vaccine requirements for school admission have varied among states, but all now have policies requiring some vaccinations. By the early 1980s, most states, including Florida, had adopted more universal school vaccine mandates.

    Florida’s Department of Education website says high immunization rates “increase the herd immunity of school populations in order to decrease the occurrence of vaccine-preventable diseases and to protect those at risk because of age, immunodeficiency or lack of vaccination.

    Public health experts said school vaccines are aimed at reducing overall risk and disease outbreaks, affecting everyone. “People can choose not to vaccinate themselves or their children, but the mandate reduces their ability to force that risk on others — co-workers, other people’s children, teachers,” Reiss said. 

    In a Sept. 3 emailed statement, the American Academy of Pediatrics Florida chapter said ending vaccine requirements will put children in Florida schools at higher risk.

    Our ruling

    Ladapo said every school vaccine requirement “drips” with “slavery.”

    Parents, including in Florida, can choose not to vaccinate their children by applying for exemptions. About 11% of Florida kindergarteners are not immunized, recent data shows.

    People who were enslaved did not have other options or exemptions.  

    The statement is not only wrong but ridiculous. We rate it Pants on Fire!

    PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.

    RELATED: Do pediatricians recommend vaccines to make a profit? There’s not much money there.

    RELATED: DNA fragments in mRNA COVID-19 vaccines won’t harm you, as Florida surgeon general suggests 

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  • CBS News Poll: Americans say vaccines should be made more available, but many say RFK Jr. making them less

    Americans tend to believe Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.‘s policies are making vaccines less available rather than more available. But the large majority of Americans feels government policy ought to make vaccines more available if people want them.

    A sizable third haven’t heard or aren’t sure.

    vax-more-less-available.png

    Also, there’s a wide view that government policy should encourage parents to vaccinate their children for diseases like measles, mumps and rubella, more specifically. Only a scant few think the government ought to discourage that. 

    Even as vaccines — particularly COVID vaccines — have sometimes been a political issue, this view on encouraging children’s vaccinations is true across party lines for the majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents. (That said, Republicans are less likely than Democrats to say outright encourage.)

    mmr-encourage-party.png

    mmr-encourage-total.png

    There are differences by education levels: Those with college degrees are more likely to say it should encourage vaccination than those without degrees.

    Much the same is true for COVID-19 vaccines, specifically: Most Democrats, Republicans, and independents say COVID vaccines should be available to people who want them. (Whether or not they would get one themselves.)

    covid-vax-avail.png

    The difference in policy perception is connected to differences in approval of RFK Jr’s job handling: Those who think he is making vaccines less available overwhelmingly disapprove of his job performance. Those who say he has not changed vaccine policy or made them more available are approving.

    It’s similar for those planning, or not planning, to get flu or COVID shots this winter. Those planning to get one are overwhelmingly disapproving; those not planning to get one are approving. 

    rfk-job-by-vax.png

    All that leads to something of a slightly net-negative job approval. It’s also highly partisan, with most Republicans approving.

    rfk-job-rating.png

    For information on whether a vaccine is safe or not, Democrats are much more trusting of the FDA and CDC than are Republicans (even as Republicans are more approving of the HHS Secretary.) Americans overwhelmingly will trust their own doctor or medical professionals.

    trust-for-vax-info.png

    Americans tend to think ultra-processed foods are either unsafe or that it depends on the product. But those views are not as connected to RFK’s job approval. 

    This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,344 U.S. adults interviewed between August 29 – September 2, 2025. The sample was weighted to be representative of adults nationwide according to gender, age, race, and education, based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as 2024 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±2.3 points.

    Anthony Salvanto

    Anthony Salvanto, Ph.D., is CBS News’ executive director of elections and surveys. He oversees the CBS News Poll and all surveys across topics and heads the CBS News Decision Desk that estimates outcomes on election nights

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  • Over 1,000 HHS staffers call on Trump to fire RFK Jr. for “endangering the nation’s health”

    More than 1,000 current and former Health and Human Services employees penned an open letter Wednesday calling for HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to either resign or be fired.

    The letter — whose signatories were not publicly named — was released at a tense time for the health agency. Last week, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Susan Monarez was fired, and several other top CDC officials resigned from their jobs in protest. Staff are also reeling from layoffs, changes to the vaccine approval system — led by Kennedy, a longtime vaccine skeptic — and a shooting outside the CDC headquarters last month.

    Wednesday’s letter accused Kennedy of “endangering the nation’s health.” It cited last week’s upheaval at the CDC, the Food and Drug Administration’s decision to rescind emergency approvals that made the COVID-19 vaccines available for young children, and the elevation of “political ideologues who pose as scientific experts” to key vaccine approval posts.

    It called for Kennedy to resign, and said that if he declines to leave his post voluntarily, President Trump should pick a new HHS secretary.

    “We swore an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution and to serve the American people. Our oath requires us to speak out when the Constitution is violated and the American people are put at risk,” the letter read.

    The letter was released by a group called Save HHS, which penned a similar open letter last month urging Kennedy to “stop spreading inaccurate health information.”

    The group said the signatories for Wednesday’s letter were provided to members of Congress, but weren’t publicly listed due to security and privacy concerns.

    HHS Communications Director Andrew Nixon responded to the letter by defending Kennedy’s record and arguing he is working to restore trust in a “broken” CDC.

    “From his first day in office, he pledged to check his assumptions at the door — and he asked every HHS colleague to do the same,” Nixon said. “That commitment to evidence-based science is why, in just seven months, he and the HHS team have accomplished more than any health secretary in history in the fight to end the chronic disease epidemic and Make America Healthy Again.”

    Separately, nine former CDC directors wrote a New York Times op-ed on Monday that castigated Kennedy for making decisions they said were “unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency,” and argued Monarez’s firing “adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.”

    Kennedy is set to testify before the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday morning, where he’s likely to face questions about the tumult at HHS.

    Last week, the White House confirmed that Monarez was fired. Her lawyers called the firing “legally deficient” and said she was “targeted” because she “refused to rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated public health experts.”

    At least four other senior CDC leaders also stepped down last week, in some cases penning resignation letters that decried cuts to the CDC, accused the Trump administration of an “ongoing weaponizing of public health” and blasted “misinformation” about vaccines.

    Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, a physician who chairs the Senate health committee, said the resignations will “require oversight.” He also sits on the Senate Finance Committee.

    Meanwhile, Kennedy ousted every member of a CDC panel responsible for making vaccine recommendations earlier this year, in some cases replacing them with people who have questioned the safety of vaccines. 

    And last week, the FDA only authorized a set of updated COVID-19 vaccines for younger adults and children with preexisting health conditions, in addition to all seniors.

    Sara Cook

    contributed to this report.

    Joe Walsh

    Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston.

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  • Florida Moves To Bring Back Childhood Polio

    Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo announced on Wednesday that the state would soon be moving to end all vaccine mandates, including those that require children to be vaccinated in order to attend public schools.

    Ladapo, who gained prominence as a COVID skeptic and was appointed by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2021, compared life-saving shots to slavery. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” he said at a press conference announcing the move.

    “Who am I as a man standing here to tell you what you should put in your body? Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” he said to raucous applause.

    Florida would become the first state in the nation to not require children to be vaccinated in order to attend school. Currently, Florida requires schoolchildren to be vaccinated against multiple diseases including polio, measles, and hepatitis B.

    Ladapo is framing the push as one centered around freedom. “You want to put whatever different vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision,” he said at the press conference. “You don’t want to put whatever vaccines in your body, God bless you. I hope you make an informed decision. That’s how it should be.”

    According to The Washington Post, DeSantis added that the state can end some mandates, but will need approval from the lawmakers for the rest.

    Childhood vaccines save millions of lives around the world each year, which is why schools, a place where infectious diseases can spread in close quarters, around the country require them. Without vaccine prevention, diseases like polio — which can cause respiratory issues, muscle weakness and even death — could spread.

    In recent years, the U.S. has seen a decline in childhood vaccination, as anti-vax activists spread misinformation, particularly about the COVID-19 shot, including claiming getting the shot would make you sick or that it was secretly microchip implantation.

    These beliefs contradict medical consensus: Public health experts say that vaccines help your immune system fight off disease and can prevent you from getting extremely sick, even if you do get infected.

    And the risks of vaccine denial are real. The country is currently in the throes of its worst measles outbreak in more than 30 years. As of July, 14 states had active outbreaks, according to The Associated Press, with another four states having outbreaks that had since ended. So far, hundreds have been infected and three people, including two children, have died. The reemergence of the disease — which had been declared eliminated in the United States as recently as 2000 — has been largely attributed to vaccine refusal.

    Florida’s changes come at a time when public health is in grave danger thanks to the Trump administration. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has thrown the government’s public health agencies into chaos. Kennedy, who embraces anti-vaccine conspiracies, announced last week that the coronavirus vaccine would only be available to a smaller pool of people. Then, after Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, refused to sign off on Kennedy’s unscientific policies — he fired her.

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  • CDC’s new acting director Jim O’Neill faces looming decisions on vaccines

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is at a crossroads. Last week, CDC Director Susan Monarez was ousted less than a month into her tenure after resisting Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s push to align with his vaccine policy agenda. Within hours, three senior leaders — including the chief medical officer and the heads of vaccine safety and respiratory infections — resigned in protest. Their exits capped weeks of mounting tension: biased scientific reviews, the withdrawal of key documents, and a shooting at CDC headquarters tied to COVID misinformation. Hundreds of staff publicly applauded the departing scientists in a rare “clap-out.” 

    Into that vacuum stepped Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, now installed as acting CDC director.

    O’Neill’s résumé breaks sharply with CDC tradition. A Bush-era HHS official turned Silicon Valley investor, he is neither a physician nor a scientist — an unusual profile for the agency’s top post. He is expected to retain his deputy role at HHS while leading the CDC. After his early government service, O’Neill spent nearly two decades in close partnership with billionaire Peter Thiel, managing his funds, directing the Thiel Foundation, and co-founding the Thiel Fellowship. He also led the SENS Research Foundation, a nonprofit focused on anti-aging science. In June, he returned to Washington as deputy secretary; he now holds that position alongside his role as CDC director.

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., right, conducts the swearing-in ceremony of Jim O’Neill as deputy secretary on June 9, 2025, in Washington, D.C. 

    Department of Health and Human Services via AP


    Former colleagues on both sides of the aisle describe him as smart and diligent, with a deep knowledge of HHS mechanics. They also note his libertarian streak, which could align him well with Secretary Kennedy but set him at odds with school vaccination requirements. His most controversial stance, voiced in 2014, was that the FDA should approve drugs once proven safe, leaving effectiveness to be determined in the marketplace — a proposal widely criticized by public health experts as dangerous.

    O’Neill insists he is “very strongly pro-vaccine,” but his recent post on social media — asking if “omicron is the best vaccine” and suggesting CDC could “redefine the word vaccine at will” — sparked new concerns about his grasp of vaccine science. Experts counter that infection is not the same as vaccination, which confers protection without the risks of acute illness or long COVID.

    He could wear both hats for some time. The White House and Kennedy appear eager to avoid a bruising Senate confirmation fight. Until COVID, the CDC director was not a Senate-confirmed position; Republicans changed that in the pandemic’s aftermath. Leaving O’Neill in an “acting” role could paralyze major decision-making at the agency for the foreseeable future.

    Meanwhile, the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee — made up of all new Kennedy appointees — is preparing for a pivotal September meeting. On the agenda: the newborn hepatitis B dose, infant RSV protection, COVID vaccination for healthy children and young adults, and the combined measles-mumps-rubella-varicella shot. Revisiting so many long-standing childhood immunizations at once would be unprecedented. If recommendations are weakened, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and the Vaccines for Children program could restrict coverage, creating new barriers for families.

    The stakes for CDC are profound. O’Neill has promised to “refocus CDC on infectious disease” and “restore trust,” yet staff and state partners say politicized decisions and budget cuts are already eroding core work. 

    The September vaccine advisory meeting will be the first real test for O’Neill. If he restores scientific processes, including transparent reviews, expert briefings, and evidence being vetted and posted before votes, CDC insiders say he could stabilize morale at the agency and preserve the credibility of its scientifically-based recommendations. If not, the resignations of senior scientists may prove the start of a broader exodus, leaving states and families without clear guidance just as flu, RSV and COVID converge this fall.

    Dr. Céline Gounder

    Dr. Céline Gounder, an internist, epidemiologist and infectious disease specialist, is a CBS News medical contributor as well as senior fellow and editor-at-large for public health at KFF Health News.

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  • Commentary: I got COVID for the first time and can’t smell. But RFK Jr.’s vaccine policies still stink

    For five years, I dodged every bullet.

    I don’t know how I managed to beat COVID-19 for so long, even as family, friends and colleagues got hit with the coronavirus. Although I took precautions from the beginning, with masking and vaccinations, I was also out in public a lot for work and travel.

    But my luck has finally run out, and it must have been the air travel that did me in. I returned from a cross-country trip with a razor blade sore throat and a stubborn headache, followed by aches and pains.

    The first test was positive.

    I figured it had to be wrong, given my super-immunity track record.

    The second test was even more positive.

    So I’ve been quarantined in a corner of the house, reaching alternately for Tylenol and the thermometer. Everything is a little fuzzy, making it hard to distinguish between the real and the imagined.

    For instance, how can it be true that just as I get COVID for the first time, the news is suddenly dominated by COVID-related stories?

    It has to be a fever-induced hallucination. There’s no other way to explain why, as COVID surges yet again with another bugger of a strain, the best tool against the virus — vaccine — is under full assault by the leaders of the nation.

    They are making it harder, rather than easier, to get medicine recommended by the overwhelming majority of the legitimate, non-crackpot wing of the medical community.

    Under the new vaccine policies, prices are up. Permission from doctors is needed. Depending on your age or your home state, you could be out of luck.

    Meanwhile, President Trump fired Susan Monarez, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, essentially for putting her own professional integrity and commitment to public service above crackpot directives from a cabal of vaccine skeptics.

    And following Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s cancellation of $500 million in mRNA vaccine research, Trump is demanding that pharmaceutical companies show proof that vaccines work.

    My eyes are red and burning, but can COVID be entirely to blame?

    I got a booster before my travels, even though I knew it might not stand up to the new strain of COVID. It’s possible I have a milder case than I might have had without the vaccine. But on that question and many others, as new waves keep coming our way, wouldn’t the smart move be more research rather than less?

    Trump downplayed the virus when it first surfaced in 2019 and 2020. Then he blamed it on China. He resisted masking, and lemmings by the thousands got sick and died. Then he got COVID himself. At one point, he recommended that people get the vaccine.

    Now he’s putting on the brakes?

    My headache is coming back, my eyes are still burning, and unless my Tylenol is laced with LSD, I think I just saw a clip in which Kennedy and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth attempted 50 pull-ups and 100 push-ups in 10 minutes.

    I appreciate the health and fitness plug, and because Kennedy and I are the same age — 71 — it’s impressive to see him in the gym.

    But there’s something that has to be said about the Kennedy-Hegseth workout tape:

    They’re cheating.

    Take a look for yourself, and don’t be fooled by the tight T-shirts worn by these two homecoming kings.

    Those were not full chin-ups or push-ups.

    Not even close.

    Cutting corners is the wrong message to send to the nation’s children, or to any age group. And how is anyone going to make it to the gym if they come down with COVID because they couldn’t get vaccinated?

    Honestly, the whole thing has to be a fever dream I’m having, because in the middle of the workout, Kennedy said, and I quote, “It was President Trump who inspired us to do this.”

    He is many things, President Trump. Fitness role model is not one of them, no matter how many times he blasts out of sand traps on company time.

    Getting back to cutting corners, Kennedy said in slashing mRNA research that “we have studied the science,” with a news release link to a 181-page document purportedly supporting his claim that the vaccines “fail to protect effectively.”

    That document was roundly eviscerated by hordes of scientists who were aghast at the distortions and misinterpretations by Kennedy.

    “It’s either staggering incompetence or willful misrepresentation,” said Jake Scott, an infectious-disease physician and Stanford University professor, writing for the media company STAT. “Kennedy is using evidence that refutes his own position to justify dismantling tools we’ll desperately need when the next pandemic arrives.”

    I lost my sense of smell a few days ago, but even I can tell you that stinks.

    steve.lopez@latimes.com

    Steve Lopez

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  • How Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.,’s Anti-Vax Agenda Is Infecting America

    For months, President Donald Trump’s Administration has launched a full-scale attack, led by his Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on America’s public-health system. In the past week, however, the efforts escalated: Kennedy, who rose to fame in part owing to his conspiracy theories about vaccinations, pushed to fire Susan Monarez, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is part of H.H.S. This came after Monarez refused to follow the lead of Kennedy’s advisers, who have tried to restrict vaccine access. (Trump has now named a Kennedy deputy, Jim O’Neill, as her replacement; Monarez’s lawyer claims that her firing was “legally deficient.”) The Trump Administration has already tried to limit access to COVID vaccines; earlier this month, the F.D.A. approved updated COVID vaccines but limited access to them to people sixty-five and older, and those with certain preëxisting conditions that put them at risk of severe illness. In mid-September, a C.D.C. advisory committee will meet and is expected to make a recommendation on who should be able to get the shots.

    I spoke about the crisis at the C.D.C. with Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and a professor of pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, at the University of Pennsylvania. During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we discussed the extent to which the federal government can deter or restrict vaccine access, what Kennedy is really trying to accomplish, and why making it more difficult for pharmacies to inoculate patients may change public health in America.

    How important are C.D.C. recommendations to vaccine uptake? How centralized a process is this?

    Everyone who is involved in administering vaccines looks to the C.D.C. for their recommendations. So the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.) is a licensing body. It says a company can sell their vaccine, but it’s the C.D.C., specifically the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (A.C.I.P.), that gives specific recommendations. They say, O.K., now that it’s licensed, you can administer this vaccine to these people at these time intervals. And they have always been the central source, so they’re critical. They are the group that people look to for advice.

    And so, when you say “people,” you’re talking about doctors, pharmacies, insurance companies, everyone, essentially.

    Yes. I think parents look to their doctors for advice, but I think the doctors and the pharmacists and others are looking to the A.C.I.P. for advice.

    I imagine there will be a lot of doctors, a majority of doctors in the United States, who are going to end up disagreeing with the Trump Administration’s guidance about vaccines. What, then, do doctors have the ability or inability to do, based on what the C.D.C. does?

    So, for example, the C.D.C.—prior to Kennedy becoming the Secretary of H.H.S.—had recommended that young children receive a vaccine based on data that were presented in April of this year showing that thousands of children were being hospitalized, that one in five of those children hospitalized were being sent to the intensive-care unit, that a hundred and fifty-two children had died, that virtually none who died were vaccinated, and that half who died were previously healthy. Most of those children were less than four years old, and many were less than six months of age. So therefore there was a clear, firm recommendation by the C.D.C. to vaccinate young children. Then, at the end of May, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., stood and said H.H.S. is no longer recommending the COVID vaccine for healthy young children and for pregnant women, even though children under six months of age could only be protected by vaccinating their mother [during pregnancy].

    That threw a wrench into the system, and here’s how it played out. The American Academy of Pediatrics is going to publish a clear recommendation in its journal saying that all children six months and older who have not been vaccinated should be; and that children less than two years of age should clearly be vaccinated because of the data showing that COVID can be a serious and occasionally fatal infection in that age group. Then the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stood up in the defense of pregnant women and said that pregnant women should receive a vaccine.

    The only vaccine available for children less than five is Moderna’s vaccine. And that is licensed only for children in a high-risk category. So now you’re stuck. You’re wondering, Is insurance going to cover this? Is insurance going to cover a young child, a healthy child getting a vaccine? Are physicians going to feel comfortable, in terms of liability, giving that? And, for the most part, physicians are covered by the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, so, more important, are pharmacists going to feel comfortable? And, even though that act does not include COVID vaccines, another act does. I talked to two lawyers and my understanding is that it doesn’t cover pharmacists, so they are being left in the lurch. It’s all confusing, and I think that’s the point. I think Kennedy’s point is to make it confusing.

    Why is Moderna the only one making a vaccine for kids, and why did they only recommend it for kids who are not healthy?

    Moderna and Pfizer initially had a vaccine approved under an emergency-use authorization (E.U.A.), and then Moderna advanced that from the emergency-use authorization to a licensed product. But that licensure through the F.D.A. unfortunately only included children who were at high risk, because what the Trump F.D.A. did was they basically usurped the role of the C.D.C. The job of the F.D.A. is to say, O.K., if this vaccine is safe and effective, then it’s licensed and the company can sell it. Then it’s up to the C.D.C. to say, O.K., looking at the epidemiological data that we have, it looks like all children older than six months benefit. But the F.D.A. preëmpted that, and basically they took over the role of the C.D.C. Project 2025 wants to eliminate C.D.C. as a recommending body. And one way to do this is what the F.D.A. just did, which is to limit the vaccines to just those children who are at high risk. Pfizer’s vaccine was approved through an emergency-use authorization for children less than five years old, but they just didn’t advance the license quickly enough. And so Kennedy saw an opportunity and basically said, We’re not going to approve anything through E.U.A. anymore. And that eliminated Pfizer’s vaccine for children.

    I have read that some countries in Europe have a more relaxed attitude to children’s vaccinations than we did before Trump. Is that accurate? And do you think that there’s anything to be said for that?

    The goal of the vaccine is to keep people out of the hospital, keep them out of the intensive-care unit, keep them out of the morgue. You’re not going to be protected against mild to moderate disease for long after either a natural infection or a vaccination. Four to six months later, your antibody response will fade; you’re still going to be protected against severe disease for a fairly long time, but you’ll still be at risk for mild to moderate disease. So then the question becomes who’s getting hospitalized? Who’s dying? That’s who you’re trying to protect. It really falls into four groups: people who are pregnant, people who are over seventy-five, people who are immunocompromised, and people who have high-risk medical conditions like chronic lung or heart disease. The logical response is to say, O.K., let’s just target those groups. Let’s give the vaccine every year to those groups, the groups most likely to be hospitalized or suffer serious illness.

    We didn’t. We just kept saying everybody over six months of age should get a yearly vaccine—and I think that was wrong. Very early on, actually, I started to say that we should target the groups who are being hospitalized. That’s the goal of the vaccine. I was getting a lot of criticism for saying that we should just target the high-risk groups. I suddenly had gotten off the bus, and I think, in the public-health world, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. Someone I talked to in that world said that would be seen as a nuanced recommendation, which is going to be seen as a garbled recommendation. And the best way to get everybody vaccinated who should be vaccinated is to make a universal recommendation. I guess it’s a testable hypothesis, but I don’t agree with that. And so it was always seen as a messaging issue. And the A.C.I.P., in April of this year, started to discuss whether they should just target high-risk groups. But then those people got fired and replaced by this group with members who are science-averse and anti-vaccine.

    Isaac Chotiner

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  • Infectious diseases doctor warns of public health consequences from CDC shakeup

    The Trump administration’s major shakeup at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has several health care workers concerned, with the next meeting of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices weeks away. Dr. Monica Gandhi, director of the UCSF Center for AIDS Research, joins CBS News to weigh in on the situation.

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  • After resigning, CDC official says agency is being

    A former top CDC official who resigned this week is blasting Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying his policies on vaccines “do not reflect scientific reality.” Nancy Cordes has more on a tumultuous week at America’s public health agency.

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  • Ex-CDC official says RFK Jr. never briefed on Covid, measles by his team

    Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. never asked to be briefed by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), said a former CDC director who stepped down in the wake of the firing of CDC Director Susan Monarez on Wednesday.

    Newsweek reached out to HHS via online form on Thursday for comment.

    Why It Matters

    The CDC is the primary public health agency for the United States. A federal agency under the HHS, the CDC is responsible for protecting the health of the nation through disease control and prevention. It is a global leader on infectious and chronic diseases and a go-to source of health information.

    The removal of Monarez comes amid criticism from some experts of public health policy in the second term of President Donald Trump, in particular his appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a known vaccine skeptic, as HHS secretary.

    Kennedy’s views around vaccinations, raw milk and water fluoridation have faced staunch opposition from public health experts who warn of their health risks.

    The revelation from Demetre Daskalakis, the former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, in an interview with CNN that Kennedy never sought experts’ advice will compound concerns among critics of his leadership.

    Former Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials Dan Jernigan, Deb Houry, and Demetre Daskalakis smile as employees and supporters of the CDC line up outside its global headquarters on August 28, 2025, in Atlanta, Georgia….


    Elijah Nouvelage/Getty Images

    What To Know

    Daskalakis, responding to a question about what Kennedy should be asked if he were to appear at a Senate hearing, said: “Has he ever been briefed by a CDC expert on anything? Specifically, measles, COVID-19, flu? I think people should ask him that.

    “The answer is no. No one from my center has ever briefed him on any of those topics. He’s getting information from somewhere, but that information is not coming from CDC experts, who really are the world’s experts in this area.

    “Perhaps he has alternate experts that he may trust more than the experts at CDC that the rest of the world regards as the best scientists in these areas,” he said.

    This month, Kennedy announced a departmental decision to pull a total of $500 million in federal funding for 22 mRNA vaccine development projects “because the data show these vaccines fail to protect effectively against upper respiratory infections like COVID and flu.”

    In June, Kennedy removed all 17 members of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) and replaced them with people who have expressed skepticism about the current immunization schedule and previously spread vaccine misinformation.

    The removal of Monarez and the resignations of Daskalakis, along with Debra Houry, chief medical officer at the CDC, and Daniel Jernigan as director of the National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, deepens a leadership vacuum at the $9.2 billion agency as lawmakers demand oversight and warn that the Kennedy-reshaped vaccine panel lacks credibility.

    The upheaval at the CDC signals an extraordinary rupture between its scientific leadership and political leadership at HHS during a period of major policy change to vaccine advisory structures and funding.

    President Donald Trump nominated RFK Jr. to head the department, which he has since pushed forward under the campaign of Making America Healthy Again.

    What People Are Saying

    Kennedy said during a Thursday press conference with Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott: “There’s a lot of trouble at CDC, and it’s going to require getting rid of some people over the long term in order for us to change the institutional culture and bring back pride and self-esteem and make that agency the stellar agency that it’s always been.”

    Daniel Jernigan, who has resigned as director, National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, CDC, told CNN: “I’ve been at CDC for 30 years, I’ve been through multiple different administrations, we’ve been able to work with a lot of different folks, different ideologies, but we always focussed on the science. Right now, I’m not sure.”

    Debra Houry, who has also resigned as told CNN: “When you can’t make things work, sometimes leaving is the statement to make.”

    What Happens Next

    The Trump Administration named Jim O’Neill, a top deputy to RFK Jr., as the new acting chief of the CDC after Monarez’s ouster.

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