As respiratory virus season nears and fall vaccination drives get underway, more than half of US children are facing uncertainty over access to this year’s COVID-19 shot. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has unexpectedly delayed the distribution of the shots to a key federal program and some states.
Usually, the CDC would allow states to order the newly available seasonal COVID-19 vaccines through the federal Vaccine for Children (VFC) program, which provides vaccines at no cost to children who are uninsured, underinsured, Medicaid-eligible, or Indigenous people in the US. Approximately 52 percent of all US children are eligible for vaccines through the program.
Additionally, The Guardian reports that at least 11 states and one US territory are part of a universal vaccine purchase program, in which they buy all vaccines for children—regardless of their ability to pay or insurance status—through contracts otherwise for the VFC. The 11 states and one territory include: Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wyoming, and American Samoan.
“The delay in VFC means delays in these states’ ability to get vaccine for all children,” Demetre Daskalakis, former director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and chief medical officer at Callen-Lorde Community Health Center, told The Guardian.
Kennedy’s track record
In a statement, the Department of Health and Human Services told Ars Technica that “CDC has not yet finalized procurement decisions for COVID-19 vaccines through the Vaccines for Children and Section 317 programs.” The department—currently run by ardent anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—declined to answer the question of why there was a delay in the decision. But the statement suggested that Trump officials were questioning whether children should get the vaccine.
“HHS and CDC are committed to … ensuring that vaccines purchased through federally funded programs are appropriate for the populations those programs serve,” the department said in the statement. It added that additional information about the decision will be released “soon.”
The unexplained delay fits with Kennedy’s well-established disdain for COVID-19 vaccines, which he has falsely called “ the deadliest vaccine[s] ever made,” and has actively tried to blame them for the deaths of children, despite no evidence to support the allegations.
In 2021, at the height of the pandemic, Kennedy petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to revoke authorization of COVID-19 vaccines and refrain from issuing any other approvals, also falsely claiming that the “risks of serious adverse events or deaths outweigh the benefits.” Instead, Kennedy’s petition urged the FDA to promote the use of the de-worming drug ivermectin and the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine against COVID-19, which were found to be ineffective and potentially risky in large, high-quality clinical trials.
Last year, Kennedy unilaterally revoked recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines for children (as well as during pregnancy). Last fall, he also dragged his feet on signing off on CDC recommendations for the shot.
Current recommendations
After a federal judge reversed many changes Kennedy made to federal vaccine guidance, the current CDC vaccine schedule for children says that healthy children aged 6 months to 17 years can get the vaccine through “shared clinical decision-making” and children who are moderately or severely immunocompromised are recommended to get the shot.
The guidance differs from what leading medical organizations have recommended for this year. Earlier this month, 2026–27 respiratory virus immunization recommendations and the evidence base behind them were released in a collaborative effort by the American Medical Association, the Vaccine Integrity Project, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA).
The medical groups recommend that children aged 2 to 18 get vaccinated if they are at higher risk or if they desire to be vaccinated. But, notably, they continue to strongly urge that all infants age 6 months to 23 months get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“The youngest children remain at high risk for severe disease,” American Academy of Pediatrics wrote in a news release this month. The hospitalization rate of infants 6 to 11 months during the 2024-’25 season was higher than that of adults ages 50-64 years, the academy noted. And most young children hospitalized with COVID-19 are healthy and not at high risk; only about 42 percent of children ages 6 to 23 months hospitalized from October 2022 to April 2024 had an underlying condition.
Roberta DeBiasi, who led the AAP Committee on Infectious Diseases COVID-19 subgroup, said “If you look at it from the standpoint of how severe their disease can be, the number of hospitalizations and how many of those children you’d need to vaccinate to prevent that, it’s really on par with the older adults.”
Beth Mole Senior Health Reporter
Beth is Ars Technica’s Senior Health Reporter. Beth has a Ph.D. in microbiology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and attended the Science Communication program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She specializes in covering infectious diseases, public health, and microbes.
