The data doesn’t lie: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Black people made up around 18% of all cases — and two out of every 10 deaths — despite being just 13% of the U.S. population. Black children who became infected were twice as likely as white kids to require hospitalization, and were more than five times as likely to be admitted to intensive care for treatment.
Meanwhile, Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during childbirth than white women, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the developed world.
Yet Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced on Tuesday that he would end the government’s recommendation that children and healthy pregnant women get vaccinated for COVID-19 — despite clear evidence of the harm it would do to millions, especially the Black community.
In a video posted on social media, Kennedy said he removed COVID-19 shots from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for those groups.
Overlooking Who Is Still at Risk
The announcement, which Kennedy said will appear in the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule, comes one week after health officials from the Food and Drug Administration announced a decrease in the number of people who will have access to this year’s updated COVID-19 vaccine.
The agency plans to limit the vaccine eligibility to adults 65 and older and individuals who have health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and several others.
The Trump administration officials argue that data show these are “high-risk” groups.
But pregnancy and infancy are also considered risk factors for severe COVID-19, which led doctors and healthcare advocates to condemn these decisions. They expressed concern that this apparently arbitrary decision will cause undue harm.
Science Continues to Prove Vaccines Work
“COVID-19’s impact on pregnancy is deeply personal to me,” Dr. Amanda Williams, interim chief medical officer with the nonprofit March of Dimes, said in a statement. “During the height of the pandemic, I cared for a healthy patient who was 32 weeks pregnant and tragically died from COVID-19 despite state-of-the-art medical care.”
“One of her last words was that she wished she had taken the vaccine,” Williams said. This loss was not only a personal tragedy, she said, but a reminder of what’s at stake, especially in communities of color.
“As a Black woman and physician, I deeply understand the mistrust many feel toward the health system. But the science is clear and has not changed,” said Williams. “Pregnant people are at higher risk for severe illness and complications from COVID-19, and vaccination significantly reduces these risks. This underscores the importance of combining compassionate and patient-centered care with evidence-based recommendations to protect both moms and babies.”
The evidence seems clear: Black people infected with COVID-19 have worse health outcomes than whites, and are significantly less likely to have access to the vaccine — access that will be even more restricted if the vaccine is no longer recommended to pregnant women and Black children.
As of 2022, the most recent data available, only 40.5% of Black children aged 5 to 11 and 63.2% of Black adolescents aged 12–17 had received a COVID-19 vaccine.
The situation was worse for adults: only 8% of Black adults had received the updated COVID-19 vaccine, compared to 15% of white adults, according to CDC data from November 2023. The infection rate was three times higher and death rates six times higher in predominantly Black U.S counties compared to predominantly white counties.
The agency plans to limit the vaccine eligibility to adults 65 and older and individuals who have health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, heart disease, obesity, cancer, and several others.
The Trump administration officials argue that data show these are “high-risk” groups.
Dr. Steven J. Fleischman, president of the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in a May 27 statement that “the science has not changed. It is very clear that COVID-19 infection during pregnancy can be catastrophic and lead to major disability, and it can cause devastating consequences for families.”
Moreover, Kennedy’s move “could strip families of choice,” Dr. Sean T. O’Leary, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Infectious Diseases, said in a statement. “Those who want to vaccinate may no longer be able to, as the implications for insurance coverage and access remain unclear.”
What’s clear, he said, “is that pregnant women, infants and young children are at higher risk of hospitalization from COVID, and the safety of the COVID vaccine has been widely demonstrated.”
The AAP’s analysis of HHS data found that more than 11,000 children were admitted to the hospital with COVID during the current respiratory virus season. More than 7,700 of those children were younger than 5 years old. Between October 2022 and April 2024, 41% of children ages 6 months to 17 years hospitalized with COVID did not have a known underlying condition.
Health Insurers Might Roll Back Coverage
This week’s announcement also “calls into question whether health care workers without underlying conditions will be eligible for vaccination,” Dr. O’Leary said.
Excluding healthy people who are pregnant means infants younger than 6 months wouldn’t be immunized against the virus, despite having COVID hospitalization rates similar to people ages 65-74 years, ACOG pointed out.
“Many health insurers rely on federal recommendations to determine coverage, and this decision could make it significantly harder for millions of Americans to access vaccines they want for themselves and their families,” said Dr. Tina Tan, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
The ISDA also urged insurers to continue covering the COVID-19 vaccine. CDC’s vaccine advisers were expected to make recommendations in June as to who should be vaccinated. It is unclear which medical experts, if any, were consulted before this week’s announcement.
