The CDC’s acting director will decide whether to accept the recommendations.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should recommend that people receive a COVID-19 vaccine only after speaking with a health care provider, agency advisers said on Sept. 19.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) unanimously advised the CDC to change its immunization schedules to move COVID-19 vaccination to shared clinical decision-making.
For most tiers of recommendations on the schedule, the default decision should be to vaccinate the patient based on age group or other indication, unless contraindicated, the CDC states. “For shared clinical decision-making recommendations, there is no default.” Instead, vaccinations “are individually based and informed by a decision process between the health care provider and the patient or parent/guardian.”
ACIP provides advice to the CDC. The CDC’s acting director can choose to accept the advice, accept it after changing it, or reject it entirely. It’s not clear when that decision will happen.
The CDC in May stopped recommending COVID-19 vaccination for pregnant women and healthy children, under orders from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. It currently recommends that all adults other than pregnant women, as well as children who are moderately or severely immunocompromised, receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
The Food and Drug Administration recently rescinded emergency authorization for the vaccines and issued updated approvals. Those moves resulted in regulators clearing the vaccines for people aged 65 and older, as well as people aged six months to 64 years who have a risk condition as defined by the CDC.
The CDC usually updates its recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines in the summer, before the FDA approves shots with updated strains that target circulating variants. This year, officials decided to have the CDC’s advisers meet after the FDA’s moves.
Some states have issued their own guidance for COVID-19 vaccines. Oregon, Washington state, California, and Hawaii, for example, are recommending COVID-19 vaccination for all children ages 6 to 23 months, as well as all children “who choose protection.” And several outside groups have also released guidance that diverges from the CDC, prior to the advised changes.
Kennedy appointed all the members of ACIP.
Around 44 percent of people aged 65 or older received a COVID-19 vaccine in late 2024 or early 2025, according to CDC data. About 14 percent of adults ages 18 to 49, 13 percent of children, and a minority of health care workers received a vaccine during that time.
