*

CDC stops recommending COVID vaccines for pregnant women,

healthy children

*

Advisers not consulted on CDC's new vaccine

recommendations

*

FDA commissioner claims no evidence for routine COVID

shots in

healthy kids

*

Outside expert says vaccine recommendation process was

turned

upside down

(Adds expert comments in paragraphs 8-10, 13-15)

By Manas Mishra and Michael Erman

May 27 (Reuters) - The U.S. has stopped recommending

routine COVID-19 vaccinations for pregnant women and healthy

children, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced in a

social media post on Tuesday, circumventing the CDC's

traditional recommendation process.

Kennedy, FDA commissioner Marty Makary and National

Institutes of Health director Jay Bhattacharya said in a video

that the shots have been removed from the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention's recommended immunization schedule.

The changes come a week after they unveiled tighter

requirements for COVID shots, effectively limiting them to older

adults and those at risk of developing severe illness.

Traditionally, the CDC's Advisory Committee for Immunization

Practices would meet and vote on changes to the immunization

schedule or recommendations on who should get vaccines before

the director of the CDC made a final call. The committee has not

voted on these changes.

Kennedy, a long-time vaccine skeptic whose department

oversees the CDC, has been remaking the U.S. health system to

align with President Donald Trump's goal of dramatically

shrinking the federal government.

"Last year, the Biden Administration urged healthy children

to get yet another COVID shot despite the lack of clinical data

to support repeat booster strategy in children," Kennedy said in

the video.

The CDC, following its panel of outside experts, previously

recommended updated COVID vaccines for everyone aged six months

and older.

"The recommendation is coming down from the secretary, so

the process has just been turned upside down," said William

Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt

University Medical Center and a consultant to the ACIP.

Schaffner said the CDC's panel was to vote on these issues

at a June meeting, where he had expected them to favor more

targeted shots instead of a universal vaccine recommendation.

"But this seems to be a bit preemptory," he said.

Dorit Reiss, professor of law at UC Law San Francisco, said

in a Facebook post that going around the advisory committee

might hurt the agency in the case of potential litigation.

Studies with hundreds of thousands of people around the

world show that COVID-19 vaccination before and during pregnancy

is safe, effective, and beneficial to both the pregnant woman

and the baby, according to the CDC's website.

But Makary said in the video that there was no evidence that

healthy children need routine COVID shots. Most countries have

stopped recommending it for children, he added.

COVID vaccine makers Moderna ( MRNA ) and Pfizer ( PFE ) did

not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Dr. Cody Meissner, professor of pediatrics at Dartmouth who

co-wrote an editorial with Makary during the COVID pandemic

against masks for children, said he agreed with the decision.

He said he felt the U.S. had been overemphasizing the

importance of the COVID vaccine for young children and pregnant

women, and that previous recommendations were based on politics,

adding that the severity of the illness generated by the virus

seems to have lessened over time in young children.