The American Academy of Pediatrics, or AAP, released its updated childhood vaccine recommendations on Monday, taking a different approach from new guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, earlier this month.
The AAP said it will continue to support vaccines that protect children from 18 serious diseases, including COVID-19, the flu, hepatitis A and B, and measles.
While this advice is mostly the same as before, it no longer matches the CDC's updated vaccine schedule, which cut the number of diseases covered in its routine childhood vaccine list from 18 to 11.
"We used to partner very closely with CDC to create a unified, harmonized set of vaccine recommendations," Dr. Sean O'Leary, chair of the AAP's committee on infectious diseases, explained on a call with reporters. "But these recent changes to the CDC schedule are a strong departure from the medical evidence and no longer offer the optimal way to prevent illness in children."
Both the AAP and CDC still agree that children should be vaccinated against diseases such as diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough, Hib, pneumococcal disease, polio, measles, mumps, rubella, HPV, and chickenpox. Some vaccines, like the MMR shot, protect against more than one disease.
Under the CDC's revised guidance, vaccines for RSV, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, dengue, and meningococcal diseases are recommended only for children considered at high risk. The AAP, however, continues to recommend most of these vaccines for children, except for dengue. The dengue vaccine is advised only for certain children aged 9 to 16 who live in areas where the disease is common and have had a prior infection. The group also noted that the dengue vaccine is no longer distributed in the U.S. due to low demand.
The CDC also said parents of children who are not high risk should make decisions about vaccines, such as COVID-19 and the flu, through discussions with their doctors.
The AAP has criticized the CDC's recent changes, calling them "dangerous and unnecessary."
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