Cdc, Its Advisers Quietly Expand Access To Covid-19 Shot For Pregnant Women

The CDC and its independent panel of vaccine advisers have quietly opened the door to wider access to Covid-19 vaccination during pregnancy, softening an earlier decision by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to stop recommending that pregnant women get the shots.

The CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted in September to advise that adults get the Covid-19 shot through shared clinical decisionmaking between patients and providers. It did not specifically vote on whether the shot should be administered during pregnancy, yet the vote appears to encompass pregnant women, according to an update this month on the CDC website that reflects the new guidance.

The new guidance for adults means that pharmacies can administer the vaccine to pregnant women and almost all insurers must cover the shots with no cost sharing — expanding access.

Neither ACIP nor the CDC in its endorsement of the change specifically mentioned that the new Covid-19 recommendations would alter Kennedy’s recommendation — which the health secretary changed in May without waiting for a vote from the committee.

It’s unclear whether all 12 panel members, who were handpicked by Kennedy, were aware that the move would undo his decision. Much of the panel’s two-day September meeting in Atlanta, Georgia, was marked by confusion as recently appointed members struggled with the procedures.ACIP Chair Martin Kulldorff did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did a spokesperson for HHS.

Children under six months old cannot get vaccinated against Covid-19, so vaccination during pregnancy is seen by many providers as a key tool for protecting vulnerable infants from the infection.

The panel’s Covid-19 recommendation contradicts what many public health experts had expected from the September meeting. Kennedy fired all of the panel’s members in June and some of the new members have argued that Covid-19 vaccines are not safe, spurring concerns that the panel would vote to drastically narrow access to the shots.

But the fact that the decision encompasses pregnant women came as a surprise to some legal experts.

“Covid-19 vaccine in pregnancy had been discussed initially — ACIP recommended them — then the secretary took that back,” said Dorit Reiss, a vaccine law expert at the University of California’s law school in San Francisco.“Under these circumstances, if they were going to change the decision about pregnancy, I would have expected them to address it expressly, since it was changed expressly [by Kennedy].”

Adding to the confusion was a comment from ACIP member and Covid work group chair Retsef Levi, who said on Sept. 19 that the panel “decided not to bring [Covid-19 vaccines and pregnancy] to a vote today,” hours before the panel cast the votes that, when approved by the CDC, changed the recommendation for pregnancy.

Levi did not respond to an email seeking clarification.