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A series of developments regarding the ongoing changes and impacts of former President Trump's executive actions on vaccine recommendations and public health guidance.
Four major U.S. medical groups simultaneously issued independent vaccination guidelines for COVID-19, influenza and RSV on Wednesday, recommending Americans continue to get immunized as the newest versions of the vaccines become available and the fall and winter respiratory season approaches.
The United States is in the midst of a growing summer surge of COVID-19, with the virus spreading across the South, West, Northeast and Midwest, according to Dr. John Brooks, an infectious disease doctor at Emory University. The wave continues a pattern of gradually milder seasonal upsurges even as federal vaccine guidance remains delayed by litigation over the Trump administration's overhaul of immunization policy.
President Donald Trump's executive order on vaccines does not change federal vaccine recommendations, according to public health experts and pediatricians, who say it is instead sowing confusion that may lead parents to delay their children's immunizations. An executive order can only offer guidance to federal agencies; it does not change laws or set recommendations, and US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance remains the same.