The shots would replace the measles, mumps, rubella combination vaccine, Jim O’Neill said.
A commonly used combination vaccine against measles should be replaced with separate shots, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Oct. 6.
The MMR vaccine targets measles, mumps, and rubella.
“I call on vaccine manufacturers to develop safe monovalent vaccines to replace the combined MMR and ‘break up the MMR shot into three totally separate shots,’” Jim O’Neill, deputy secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and acting director of the CDC, wrote on X.
O’Neill was quoting President Donald Trump, who said on social media in September that the MMR vaccine should be separated into three shots. That followed the president advising people during a briefing to get separate measles, mumps, and rubella shots.
There are, at present, no separate vaccines available for measles, mumps, and rubella, according to the CDC. “MMR vaccine is very safe and is effective at preventing measles, mumps, and rubella,” the CDC states on its website, including being 97 percent effective against measles after two doses.
Nearly all states require two doses of the MMR vaccine to attend school, based on the CDC immunization schedule.
A measles vaccine was first introduced in the United States in 1963. The MMR vaccine debuted in 1971. It has side effects, including fever and febrile seizures.
Merck and GlaxoSmithKline manufacture MMR vaccines for the U.S. market.
Richard Haupt, Merck’s head of global medical and scientific affairs, vaccines, and infectious diseases, said during a meeting in September that “combination vaccines improve completion and on-time vaccination, leading to higher adherence and fewer delays in disease prevention.”
GlaxoSmithKline did not respond to a request for comment.
Dr. Paul Offit, a former government adviser who developed a vaccine against rotavirus with Merck, said on X that separating the MMR shot into separate vaccines would lead to children “getting six shots instead of two shots for no reason.”
O’Neill was named acting CDC director in August, after Trump fired Susan Monarez.
