A Facilities for Illness Management and Prevention research launched Thursday finds that Covid vaccines proceed to guard wholesome kids from extreme sickness — a conclusion prime federal well being officers have questioned in latest months.
From late August 2024 to early September 2025, the vaccines decreased the chance of Covid-related emergency room and pressing care visits by 76% amongst kids ages 9 months to 4 years, and by 56% amongst kids ages 5-17, in keeping with the research.
The findings, revealed within the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), are primarily based on an evaluation of roughly 98,000 emergency room and pressing care visits. Youngsters included within the research had numerous ranges of immunity from prior Covid vaccines and infections, so the research solely checked out added safety from 2024-2025 Covid vaccines, the authors wrote.
The research seems to counter claims by Well being Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. concerning the vaccines’ effectiveness and handle doubts raised by different federal well being officers about whether or not kids profit from persevering with to obtain Covid photographs.
It comes amid widespread concern from public well being specialists that the CDC has misplaced scientific credibility, in addition to claims from former high-ranking staffers that the company’s political leaders have interfered with scientific analysis.
Dr. Debra Houry, who resigned because the CDC’s former chief medical officer in August, mentioned the research’s launch is reassuring.
“It’s good to see that knowledge and science are nonetheless popping out of the MMWR. I hope this publication will proceed to be a voice for the company scientists regardless of the latest cuts to the CDC Workplace of Science,” Houry mentioned through textual content message.
The Workplace of Science produces the MMWR, the company’s flagship scientific publication. Amongst different CDC departments, it was caught up in a sweeping spherical of layoffs throughout the federal government shutdown in October. The layoffs had been later rescinded and quickly blocked by a federal decide. The CDC has undergone three rounds of layoffs since President Donald Trump took workplace in January.
The company’s Covid vaccine coverage has additionally shifted underneath the management of Kennedy, an anti-vaccine activist who oversees all federal well being companies together with the CDC.
Kennedy claimed at a Senate Finance Committee listening to in September that the vaccine trade couldn’t produce a research exhibiting Covid photographs had been efficient in wholesome children. He added that “there’s no scientific knowledge” to assist Covid vaccine suggestions for wholesome folks.
The CDC’s analysis has constantly discovered that Covid vaccines and booster photographs defend towards extreme sickness in each adults and kids.
Kennedy introduced in Might that the CDC would cease recommending Covid vaccines for wholesome kids and pregnant girls, bypassing the everyday regulatory course of. Then in September, a gaggle of vaccine advisors appointed by Kennedy equally voted to not universally suggest Covid photographs, as an alternative suggesting that individuals speak to their physician about the advantages of getting vaccinated.
Two Meals and Drug Administration officers, commissioner Marty Makary and vaccine chief Vinay Prasad, mentioned the advantages of Covid boosters had been “unsure” in a New England Journal of Medication editorial revealed in Might.
In a memo final month to company employees, Prasad claimed that Covid photographs have killed at the very least 10 kids and that “we would not have dependable knowledge” on the vaccines’ advantages in wholesome children. Twelve former FDA commissioners denounced the claims, writing within the New England Journal of Medication that “substantial proof reveals that vaccination can scale back the chance of extreme illness and hospitalization in lots of kids and adolescents.”
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