Exclusive: HHS planning to overhaul childhood vaccine schedule to recommend fewer shots, source says

By Adam Cancryn, Meg Tirrell, Brenda Goodman, Katherine Dillinger, CNN

(CNN) — The US Department of Health and Human Services is planning to overhaul the schedule of recommended vaccines for children in the US, a person familiar with the plans told CNN on Thursday.

The proposed new schedule would recommend fewer shots, bringing it closer in line with what’s recommended in other developed countries. The expectation is that the US schedule will be close to, if not identical to, recommendations in Denmark, according to the person, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about the matter.

The plan has not been finalized and could still change. HHS had planned to make the announcement Friday afternoon, the person said, but it was pushed to 2026 so as not to conflict with White House plans to announce further efforts to lower drug costs through “Most Favored Nation” pricing.

An HHS spokesperson declined to comment and referred questions to the agency’s earlier statement that it had postponed a “children’s health announcement” until next year.

The planned overhaul comes weeks after President Donald Trump ordered officials to review the childhood vaccine schedule and weigh recommending fewer shots.

“It is ridiculous!” Trump wrote earlier this month in a Truth Social post about the current US schedule. “That is why I have just signed a Presidential memorandum directing the Department of Health and Human Services to ‘FAST TRACK’ a comprehensive evaluation of Vaccine Schedules from other Countries around the World, and better align the U.S. Vaccine Schedule.”

In a post on X, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. responded: “Thank you, Mr. President. We’re on it.”

‘A bit of a head scratcher’

Denmark’s 2025 vaccine schedule, published by the European Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shows that the country vaccinates children against fewer infectious diseases than the US does.

Denmark doesn’t currently recommend immunization against respiratory syncytial virus, or RSV, for children; the US does. RSV is the leading cause of hospitalization in infants.

It also doesn’t recommend the rotavirus, hepatitis A, meningococcal, flu or chickenpox vaccines for children, while these vaccines are on the US schedule.

“Why would we ever want to emulate that?” asked Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. “They made a financial decision. They decided to allow that degree of suffering and hospitalization. They didn’t want to spend that much money per hospitalization prevented.”

Dr. Peter Hotez, a pediatrician who directs the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children’s Hospital, called the plan “a bit of a head scratcher.”

The administration’s focus on “Denmark’s system of socialism and universal healthcare … is interesting but out of character” with its rhetoric, he said in a text message.

“More likely, it’s part of DHHS’s consistent efforts to make vaccines unavailable to the American people. They cherry-picked Denmark because they administer the fewest vaccines of any Western country. And by going to Denmark’s system it affords them an opportunity to deprive Americans of vaccines for bacterial meningitis and rotavirus which are major causes of morbidity and mortality of America’s children. They’ve not done their epidemiological homework to realize how these are major illnesses in the U.S.,” he said.

“It’s superficial, ideological, and incurious. The DHHS in this administration couldn’t care less if children suffer from disease as long as at it meets their ideological targets.”

US vs. Denmark

Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, newly named acting director of the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, gave a presentation on the Danish vaccine schedule at this month’s meeting of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisers.

“I think one of the reasons Denmark may do a better job at making their vaccine recommendations is, it’s not a politicized discussion,” said Hoeg, a dual citizen of the US and Denmark. She described a multiparty system, culture of debate and strong acknowledgment of knowns and unknowns.

Hoeg noted that with fewer vaccines, there’s less exposure to aluminum, which is used as an adjuvant — an ingredient added to create a stronger immune response. It’s used in several childhood vaccines because it enables doctors to give fewer doses, which requires a smaller amount of vaccine. Despite broad evidence that using aluminum-containing adjuvants in vaccines is safe, Kennedy has argued that aluminum in vaccines is linked to allergies and other health conditions.

During the CDC meeting, Dr. Adam Langer, the agency’s expert on hepatitis B, took issue with the Denmark comparison ahead of a significant change to hepatitis B vaccine recommendations for infants.

“The United States is a unique country,” he began. Of Denmark, he pointed out, “the entire country has 6 million people. The population of New York City alone is 8 million people.”

Other differences cited by Langer:

• More than 95% of pregnant women in Denmark are screened for hepatitis B, “far higher than the number in the United States.”
• Prenatal care in Denmark is free “for both citizens and refugee or asylum-seekers in Denmark. We all know this is not the case in the United States.”
• Denmark has a national health registry that compiles health information at the individual level; “the US does not have that, and I imagine that our privacy culture would not permit us to ever have something like that.”
• In Denmark, pregnant women who test positive for hepatitis B virus are followed up with, along with all infants, to ensure they’re vaccinated and tested for the virus, whereas in the US, “many of these infants are lost to follow-up as soon as they leave the hospital.”

“Denmark and, for that matter, virtually all other high-income countries are not really peer nations,” Langer concluded.

Hoeg responded that the level of risk for babies isn’t different because of differences in health care systems.

“As a mother of children who were born in Denmark, moving to the United States, they were low-risk there, they were low-risk here. I couldn’t understand why you would use a vaccine in one country but not the other for the same level of risk,” she said. “I think the frustration maybe that American parents face is, if they know that their child is at low risk, why we as a country choose to try to vaccinate our way out of an imperfect health care system.”

Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly said a vaccine listed on the Danish childhood schedule was not included on the schedule.

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