Judge blocks changes made by the Trump Administration to vaccination recommendations

Los Angeles. - A federal judge suspended on Monday the changes ordered by the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to the U.S. vaccination policy, which reduced the number of recommended immunizations for covid-19 and childhood. Federal Judge Brian E. Murphy sided with the American Academy of Pediatrics and other plaintiff organizations that challenged the modifications and restructuring of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which establishes the childhood vaccination schedule. In January, HHS announced that it stopped mandating four vaccines, those for rotavirus, influenza, meningococcal disease, and hepatitis A, within the childhood immunization schedule in the United States as part of its review of these programs.

These four vaccines became optional, and are administered or not based on the agreed decision adopted, case by case, by parents and doctors.

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With the ordered change, the recommendation to vaccinate children was reduced from 18 to 11 diseases against which they are immunized, which represented a substantial shift in the United States health system. Regarding this, Murphy said in his ruling that, in addition to being against the law, last January's memorandum "was arbitrary and capricious," given that it abandoned the agency's long-standing practice of gathering recommendations from the ACIP before modifying vaccination schedules. Last year, Kennedy Jr. dismissed the 17 members of the ACIP, replacing them with people aligned with his policy of reducing vaccines. The failure of this Monday represents a setback in the HHS secretary's vaccine agenda.