--- title: The Clashing Advice Over COVID-19 Shots for Kids description: The American Academy of Pediatrics is breaking from federal advice about COVID-19 shots for kids—a highly unusual move. canonical: https://time.com/7311005/covid-19-vaccine-kids-advice-aap-cdc/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2025-08-21T14:56:27.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-19T08:10:18.261Z article:section: Health og:title: The Clashing Advice Over COVID-19 Shots for Kids og:description: The American Academy of Pediatrics is breaking from federal advice—a highly unusual move. og:url: https://time.com/7311005/covid-19-vaccine-kids-advice-aap-cdc/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta33c27c206dbee8e/6998c91a7323afa3992bcc61/GettyImages-642619430.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2121 og:image:height: 1193 og:image:alt: GettyImages-642619430.jpg og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Clashing Advice Over COVID-19 Shots for Kids twitter:description: The American Academy of Pediatrics is breaking from federal advice—a highly unusual move. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blta33c27c206dbee8e/6998c91a7323afa3992bcc61/GettyImages-642619430.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Clashing Advice Over COVID-19 Shots for Kids > Sponsored content. 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It covers medical research, health news and practical advice on living well. #### Where can I get reliable health news by email? Health Matters is TIME's weekday health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=b972a9a6-3c5c-4618-a54f-fe4cada8985f&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) ## Video: Who Should Get The Covid Vaccine This Fall? [Watch (HLS stream): Who Should Get The Covid Vaccine This Fall?](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/677To7XH.m3u8) (2:59)  _Published 2025-08-28. The American Academy of Pediatrics is breaking from federal advice—a highly unusual move._  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 21, 2025 2:56 PM UTC  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Aug 21, 2025 2:56 PM UTC Should you give your baby a COVID-19 shot? The answer isn't as straightforward or as much of a consensus as it used to be: In an unusual move, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is [recommending](https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases/aap/2025/the-american-academy-of-pediatrics-releases-its-own-evidence-based-immunization-schedule/) a different approach to childhood vaccination than the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Both groups agree that families should make individual decisions in consultation with their doctors about whether kids should be vaccinated. But the AAP has a stricter stance for the youngest eligible children in the U.S., recommending that all of them get COVID-19 shots. The CDC [stopped recommending](https://time.com/7288915/cdc-covid-19-vaccines-pregnant-women-children/) COVID-19 vaccines for healthy children older than six months following [guidance](https://www.hhs.gov/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccines/index.html) from the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., in May. The CDC does, however, recommend the shot for children who are moderately or severely immunocompromised. A day after the AAP released its recommendations, Kennedy fired back at the organization on [social media](https://x.com/seckennedy/status/1957914911415153107?s=46&t=9AHxthXdGRIl37bvHR6MCg), accusing them of allowing pharmaceutical-company donors to guide their recommendations. AAP maintains that its recommendations are based on science. Here’s what to know about the clashing advice regarding COVID-19 vaccines for kids. ## What does the AAP recommend in terms of COVID-19 shots for children? Whether most children should get a COVID-19 vaccine should be based on their particular risk, the AAP says—taking into account their underlying conditions, such as asthma, obesity, or diabetes, as well as whether they live in a household with people at high risk for developing severe disease. That risk is higher for the youngest eligible age group—ages 6 months to 23 months—which is why the AAP recommends that all kids in this age group get vaccinated. “For the youngest kids, the hospitalization rate is similar to that for adults 50 to 64 years old,” says Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases. “It’s not nothing. And that’s for something that can be prevented by a vaccine, which has been better studied than any medical product in our history. We have a very strong level of confidence in the safety of the vaccine.” HHS did not respond to TIME's request for comment. ## Why are the recommendations different? Generally, the CDC sets the schedule for which vaccines people should get and at which ages. The CDC makes its decision based on advice from its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). ACIP is made up of independent experts who volunteer to review data, discuss their findings, and make recommendations to help guide the CDC. But Kennedy—a longtime vaccine-skeptic who now oversees the CDC as head of HHS—[fired](https://time.com/7292553/rfk-jr-removes-cdc-vaccine-committee-experts/) all members of ACIP in [June](https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hhs-restore-public-trust-vaccines-acip.html), accusing them of following industry interests. Kennedy replaced them days later with people he had selected, “many of them with strong anti-vaccine views,” says O’Leary. **Read More**: [_How Having a Baby Is Changing Under Trump_ ](https://time.com/7278169/baby-screenings-newborn-changing-trump-administration/) After ACIP was replaced, AAP—which typically works closely with the advisory committee and other liaison groups in setting vaccination schedules—decided not to attend ACIP’s first meeting under the new administration in the spring. “We saw from that meeting that ACIP has gone off the rails, essentially, in terms of the way they are operating and the messaging from the new members, which is very much around sowing distrust about vaccines and not making evidence-based vaccine recommendations,” says O’Leary. Weeks later, the AAP and other liaison groups were asked to discontinue their participation in ACIP work groups, O’Leary says. “We received an email un-inviting us,” he says. The reason provided, he says, was that the organizations represented “special interest groups,” which O’Leary says is a “poor interpretation of the rules. All of the organizations at the table have expertise, and there are a lot of reasons to have representation from professional societies.” ## Which advice will doctors and pharmacists follow? O’Leary says pediatricians are anticipating having to have more conversations with families about the conflicting vaccine advice, and that the AAP is providing guidance to help inform those discussions on its website and via emails to its members. “Politics has entered the exam room in a way that it never has before,” he says. “These discussions will be contextual, depending on how well the pediatrician knows the family, what relationship they have, and how frank they can be with them in the discussion.” Ultimately, he says, the message from pediatricians should be this: “We are committed to the health of children, and our recommendations are based on the best available science.” **Read More**: [_What the New COVID-19 Vaccine Guidance Means For You_](https://time.com/7287451/fda-new-covid-19-vaccine-guidance/) Pharmacists must take a slightly different approach, since they are only allowed to vaccinate according to the CDC’s recommendations, while doctors can vaccinate outside of strictly approved conditions or populations in so-called “off-label” use. Since current CDC recommendations say that families should make their own decisions about whether their children receive the shot, pharmacists will vaccinate kids if parents want them to have the shots, but won’t specifically recommend that people get them. “Our guidance is to always follow what the CDC or HHS recommends,” says Rick Gates, chief pharmacy officer at Walgreens. If families come in with questions about whether their child should get the COVID-19 shot, pharmacists will probably refer them back to their pediatrician or family physician. ## Will insurance cover COVID-19 vaccines for kids if the CDC doesn’t recommend them? It’s still not clear how insurers will respond to the differing recommendations. “This is a real concern,” says Dr. David Higgins, an infectious-disease expert at AAP. Traditionally, a recommendation from ACIP means that a shot will be covered, since any vaccines recommended by the committee have to be reimbursed by insurers under the Affordable Care Act. It’s not clear how insurers will interpret the individual choice of families when it comes to vaccinating children. The AAP is [urging](https://publications.aap.org/aapnews/news/32835?autologincheck=redirected) insurers to continue covering the COVID-19 vaccine for infants six to 23 months, despite the fact that ACIP does not recommend the vaccine for all kids in this age group. “The AAP is already engaging with private insurers and policymakers to ensure our evidence-based recommendations are covered,” Higgins says, “and we will continue to advocate to make vaccines accessible to every child in every community.” ## Transcript FDA approved the new Covid 19 vaccine, and they approved it specifically for use in individuals over the age of 65 or individuals under the age of 65 who have at least one pre-existing condition that makes them more likely to develop severe Covid 19 after infection. The two messenger RNA vaccines that are available, the Pfizer vaccine and the Moderna vaccine, um, are very similar in many ways. Uh, the exception being that the Moderna vaccine is approved for individuals down to six months of age, whereas the Pfizer vaccine is only approved for individuals down to the age of five years. Prior to this year, the vaccine was approved for all individuals either five years of age or over, or six months of age or older, depending on which vaccine you were working with. So the FDA approval was much more broader and set the stage for a more precise recommendation of who actually is recommended to get the vaccine, which is done by the centers for Disease Control. There's no doubt that the current FDA recommendations for for what the Covid vaccine should be used for targets populations that we know are vulnerable to severe disease. Um, but what it doesn't do is it doesn't think about the fact that there are actually other portions of the population that do suffer from severe disease, albeit at lower rates. And what this essentially does is it takes that vaccine off the plate for use in other populations. Um, particularly one of the populations that's surging right now is children under the age of 12 and emergency room visits for Covid in that population. That's the number one population. Um, right now, the CDC is going to be making the true recommendations for who gets the vaccine. And that may be even more restrictive than what the FDA has said. And so we're still waiting for an official CDC verification of who should be getting the vaccine. Again, that hasn't happened yet. And Covid is happening right now. So, you know, we run the risk of delaying the rollout of the vaccine. Uh, while we go through some of these regulatory hurdles, the FDA guidance will limit accessibility of the vaccine to individuals because it puts additional hurdles in place for otherwise healthy individuals to get the vaccine. We normally don't talk to our medical doctors or our physicians about a vaccine. For many vaccines, simply talking to the pharmacist administering the vaccine is enough to gauge whether a person is eligible and would like to get the vaccine. 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