“That’s crazy!” President Trump said of the long-recommended neonatal hepatitis B vaccination schedule, which has led to decades of declines in new infections.
Could RFK Jr.’s Vaccine Committee Overturn Hepatitis B Vaccine?
Health Department Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s Vaccine Advisory Committee will discuss and potentially postpone the critical immunization that protects infants from hepatitis B.
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump defended the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s decision to stop recommending the first dose of hepatitis B vaccine for newborns within 24 hours of birth.
At its Dec. 5 meeting, the commission announced controversial new guidance that overturns decades of established medical advice. The surprising policy change immediately sparked a backlash from public health experts, who feared it would reverse decades of declines in new cases of the liver-damaging virus since all newborns began receiving vaccinations.
In a social media post the same day, the president said the vaccine committee had made a “very good decision” to change the schedule, calling it “ridiculous.”
“I have full confidence that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and the CDC will get this done quickly and accurately for our nation’s children,” he wrote. “Thank you, Mr. President. We are working on it,” the Secretary of Health and Human Services responded.
The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, whose membership was overhauled by President Kennedy to further increase vaccine skepticism, said infants born to mothers who did not test positive for hepatitis B should not receive their first hepatitis B vaccine until they are at least 2 months old.
Even some Republicans are wary of such guidance. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana), a physician who chairs the Senate Health Committee, urged the acting CDC director not to sign any new recommendations and “instead maintain current evidence-based approaches.”
Changes at the CDC will “make America even sicker,” he stressed.
“As a liver doctor who has treated patients with hepatitis B for decades, this change in the vaccine schedule is a mistake. The hepatitis B vaccine is safe and effective,” he wrote on social media. “Before the birth dose recommendation was recommended, 20,000 newborns were infected with hepatitis B each year; now there are less than 20. Once the neonatal recommendation ends, the number of cases is likely to start rising again.”
Contributor: Erin Mansfield, USA TODAY
Zachary Schermele is a Congressional reporter for USA TODAY. You can email us at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele and on Bluesky at @zachschermele.bsky.social..
