Medical groups have released vaccine recommendations this fall in lieu of guidance from the CDC. File Photo by Javier Aparico/EPA
Sept. 2 (UPI) — A group of medical organizations has released guidance on fall vaccinations against respiratory illnesses.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention usually launches a fall campaign to recommend seasonal vaccines for diseases like RSV, influenza and COVID-19. This year, however, the agency has not issued its updated recommendations for the respiratory virus season.
In March, the American Academy of Pediatrics won a lawsuit against the federal government that blocked Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from overhauling the childhood vaccine schedule.
Kennedy and President Donald Trump have said that children get too many vaccines and have reduced the number of vaccines routinely recommended. They have also linked vaccines to autism, which has been proven untrue by research.
In response, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American Academy of Family Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America each issued guidelines for fall immunizations. They based those guidelines on research from the American Medical Association and the University of Minnesota’s Vaccine Integrity Project
Last year, the CDC changed the COVID-19 recommendations to say that patients should talk to their own doctors.
On Tuesday, the agency said, “the CDC states the recommendations for seasonal influenza vaccination from the July 2025 immunization schedule remain in effect for the 2026-2027 influenza season.” It doesn’t mention the new mRNA flu vaccine, approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month.
“For more than 60 years, the United States has benefited from an established federal process for evaluating vaccine evidence and translating that science into recommendations for the American public. At the center of that process were the Centers for Disease Control and its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the ACIP,” CNN reported Dr. Bruce Gellin, board chair of the Vaccine Integrity Project and professor of medicine at Georgetown University, said at a press briefing.
“Unfortunately today, the federal government is not fulfilling that responsibility in the way that it historically has. But the need for that work has not disappeared. Influenza, SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] and the RSV viruses will circulate again this fall and winter,” Gellin said.
“We cannot allow the breakdown of a federal process to create a vacuum in evidence-based vaccine guidance,” he added.
Dr. Sarah Nosal, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians, said in the news briefing that insurance companies have indicated they will cover the vaccines.
“Vaccines are one of medicine’s greatest success stories. They prevent serious illness, reduce hospitalizations and long-term complications and save lives,” Nosal said in a press release. “As federal guidance evolves, the science behind vaccines remains strong. These recommendations are grounded in the latest evidence, informed by public health experts and shaped by what family physicians are seeing every day in their patients.”