US plan to remove some childhood vaccines to align with Denmark would put children at risk, experts say
The US is reportedly planning to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccination program. Experts say the move could set public health back decades
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a well-known vaccine skeptic, has pressed for changes to the U.S. vaccine program.
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
The US is reportedly planning to overhaul the country’s childhood vaccination program. move, First reported by CNNIt will change how many vaccines are given to protect children from various diseases and when they get those vaccines.
The Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has long been a vaccine skeptic and supports changes to the vaccine schedule. According to CNN, recommendations for several vaccines that are currently routinely given to children in the US – including vaccines for rotavirus, varicella (chickenpox), hepatitis A, meningococcal bacteria, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) – could be eliminated entirely under the plans.
Childhood vaccines collectively protect children and the U.S. population from diseases like measles and hepatitis B that, once contracted, cause illness, hospitalization or death in hundreds or thousands of people each year. Currently, vaccines against 18 diseases are recommended for children in the US, compared to 10 in Denmark.
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Infectious disease epidemiologist Jessica Malati Rivera says changing the vaccines children receive would be “a terrible mistake.” protect public healthAn all-volunteer organization sponsored by a nonprofit organization. As a result, more children may become sick and die from preventable diseases.
For example, RSV is the leading cause of pediatric hospitalizations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Every year in the US, about 58,000 to 80,000 children under five years of age are hospitalized due to this disease. The two available shots, which are not technically vaccines but antibody drugs that protect against RSV, were approved in 2023 and 2025 and are more than 90 percent effective at preventing hospitalization. Malti Rivera says many of the vaccines reportedly targeted for removal are ones that were recently approved.
Malti Rivera says people have an arbitrary series of “old-school” vaccines, such as those for polio and measles, and “new-school” vaccines, such as those for chickenpox and human papillomavirus (HPV). But these new vaccines have been around for decades and have been shown to be highly effective, she says.
The Trump administration has stated earlier He wants to bring US vaccine policy in line with other developed countries, and notably Denmark, which recommends fewer vaccines than the US and recommends them at different times of life. The comparison was a major focus of discussion at a recent meeting of the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee. But there’s no point comparing the US to countries like Denmark, which have very different health care systems.
That kind of comparison, says Malti Rivera, “isn’t apples to oranges; it’s apples to steaks.” “I cannot underestimate the value of universal health care and the extremely organized health care infrastructure in Denmark”.
“We can learn a lot from some of the studies that have come out from other countries, but we have to use a critical mind to figure out what is applicable in our context and what is not,” says Jennifer Nuzzo, an epidemiologist and director of the Epidemic Center at Brown University.
One key difference between the US and Denmark that Kennedy and other US health officials seem to avoid is that the European country has a national health care system that covers everyone for free while the US does not.
“In Denmark or other places that have universal health coverage, people don’t fall into the health care gap like they do in the United States. The reality of our health system is that people fall into the gap,” Nuzzo says.
Changes in the vaccine schedule in America will also affect who will be able to take the vaccine. What the CDC recommends affects what private health insurers will cover and what federal programs like vaccines for children will subsidize.
“When changes are made to the schedule, it will impact who is able to get vaccinated, whether you want them or not,” Nuzzo says. “It’s not about allowing you to opt out. It’s about making it harder for you to opt-in.”
According to CNN, the plan may still change. The Department of Health and Human Services had scheduled a press conference for Friday about the children’s health, but has since postponed the announcement until next year.
Nuzzo says if these further changes occur, they will erode collective protection against deadly infectious diseases. Individual medical providers and states can take steps to maintain access to vaccines, but people may still slip through the cracks of an overstretched public health system.
“We have to make public health recommendations that work for everyone. Obviously there are people who can’t spend most of their time finding reliable sources of information,” Nuzzo says. “I am concerned about those who will not get the life-saving protection they need.”
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