The Trump administration appears to be expanding RSV vaccinations to some adults starting at age 50, down from 60, following the advice of a recently fired panel of government vaccine advisers.
The decision appears on a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention webpage but as of Wednesday wasn鈥檛 on the agency鈥檚 official .
RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus, typically is a coldlike nuisance, but it can be severe, even life-threatening, for infants and older adults. The CDC recommends vaccination for certain pregnant women and a onetime shot for everyone 75 or older. But people as young as 60 with health problems that increase their risk can also get it.
In April, the CDC鈥檚 influential Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended expanding RSV vaccination to high-risk adults as young as 50, too. But the CDC lacks a director to decide whether to adopt that recommendation and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. didn鈥檛 immediately act.
Last month, Kennedy all 17 members of that panel and handpicked seven replacements that include several vaccine skeptics.
The new panel alarmed doctors' groups last week by ignoring settled science on a rarely used and by of the children鈥檚 vaccine schedule. It didn't revisit RSV vaccination for older adults.
Kennedy already had taken the unusual step of COVID-19 vaccine recommendations without consulting the committee.
On Wednesday, a said that on June 25, Kennedy had adopted the ousted panel's recommendation to expand RSV vaccination to high-risk 50-somethings and it is 鈥渘ow an official recommendation of the CDC.鈥�
That move was first reported by Endpoints News.
___
The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute鈥檚 Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
Lauran Neergaard, The Associated Press
