A federal judge has halted a narrower vaccine recommendation after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) advised all adults and children aged 6 months and older to receive the COVID-19 vaccine. However, concerns about the safety of this vaccine persist.
On September 23, the CDC recommended on its website that all adults receive one dose of the recently approved, updated COVID-19 vaccine unless they have special circumstances, such as experiencing symptoms of myocarditis within three weeks of receiving the vaccine.
At the same time, the CDC recommended that all children aged 6 months to 17 years who have never been vaccinated against COVID-19 should receive at least one dose of the vaccine, unless there are special circumstances. Children identified as having moderate to severe immunodeficiency should also receive at least one dose of the vaccine.
According to estimates released by the CDC, by the end of 2025 or early 2026, only 9.7% of children had received the COVID-19 vaccine.
Both the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are under the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in the United States. The FDA approved an updated version of the COVID-19 vaccine in August of this year, including several vaccines that use messenger RNA (mRNA) technology, despite the lack of human data at that time to show the effectiveness of these vaccines.
The FDA-approved vaccines are suitable for all individuals aged 65 and older, as well as for individuals aged 6 months to 64 years with one or more underlying conditions such as asthma and obesity. Officials stated that these conditions put them at a higher risk of severe COVID-19 symptoms.
This means that the CDC’s recommendations are broader than the scope of the FDA-approved vaccines.
The HHS declined to comment on this matter. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. previously referred to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine as the “most deadly vaccine in history,” citing data on death cases reported in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). In 2021, he called for the withdrawal of market authorizations for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. However, he has recently acknowledged that early versions of the vaccine saved lives.
Supporters of the “Restore American Health” movement have recently urged Kennedy to withdraw Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccines from the market for safety reasons.
Following the CDC’s new recommendations, Dr. Mary Talley Bowden, founder of Americans for Health Freedom, told Epoch Times, “This move by the CDC completely ignores safety and the will of the American people, and lacks administrative transparency.”
Retsef Levi, a former CDC vaccine advisor, posted on the X platform that there have been cases of death after receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, and the risk of myocarditis is higher in young men after vaccination. The CDC also states on its website that extending the interval between doses may reduce the risk of myocarditis.
In 2025, the CDC revised its overall recommendations for the COVID-19 vaccine, advising that anyone considering vaccination should consult a doctor to weigh the risks and benefits of vaccination against their individual health conditions.
The vaccine policies implemented by Kennedy and other updates were halted by a judge in March of this year. However, this is not yet the final outcome as an appeal is still pending.