Wisconsin Breaks From CDC, Keeps COVID-19 Vaccine Recommendation For Pregnant Women

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Wisconsin’s health department is keeping in place its recommendation that pregnant women and all children receive one of the currently available COVID-19 vaccines, diverging from guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services said on June 4 it is continuing to recommend COVID-19 vaccination for people aged 6 months and older.

Officials also said the state’s Medicaid would keep covering the vaccine for eligible members, including pregnant women.

“The current COVID-19 vaccine was thoroughly reviewed for safety and effectiveness and continues to be an important tool in preventing severe illness and death,” Kirsten Johnson, secretary of the department, said in a statement.

The CDC in late May stopped recommending that pregnant women receive a COVID-19 vaccine. The agency also now says that healthy children should only receive one of the shots after consulting with doctors and parents.

“Their decision should be based on informed consent through the clinical judgement of their healthcare provider,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC’s parent agency, told The Epoch Times in an email at the time.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said that the previous recommendations, which said that children should receive a vaccine regardless of prior vaccination and infection, were put into place “despite the lack of any clinical data to support the repeat booster strategy in children.”

Wisconsin officials said the changes “were not made based on new data, evidence, or scientific or medical studies” and that they were keeping in place the recommendations following an independent review.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services did not return a request for comment on Wisconsin’s move.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services did not respond when asked for evidence the vaccines prevent severe illness and death.

The current versions of the vaccines from Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax were cleared by federal regulators in 2024 based on animal data and antibody data from humans, rather than data from human clinical trials. The CDC then issued its recommendations, which were unchanged from the advice for previous formulations.

Data from CDC systems presented to the agency’s vaccine advisers in April pegged a dose of one of the currently available vaccines as providing 21 percent to 36 percent additional protection to adults when measuring emergency department and urgent care visits, and 42 percent to 48 percent additional protection for immunocompetent adults aged 65 and up when measuring COVID-19 associated hospitalizations.

No other states appeared to react to the recent CDC updates apart from Florida, which praised the narrowed recommendations. The move “is an important advancement for parents, physicians, and children across the country,” Dr. Joseph Ladapo, Florida’s surgeon general, said in a statement. He added that “ultimately, scientific evidence dictates that the use of these products should end for all populations.”

The American Pharmacists Association said on June 9 that it was not endorsing the updated adult immunization schedule. The group said that COVID-19 vaccination during pregnancy “has been proven safe and effective” and that it views pregnancy as a condition that places women at higher risk of severe COVID-19.

The group, which did not respond to a request for comment, said that it hopes future updates to the schedule are “based on scientific evidence” and that they are based on advice from the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel, the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

A subgroup of that panel said in the spring that they supported shifting the CDC’s universal recommendations for COVID-19 vaccines to a non-universal recommendation.

The panel, whose members were all later terminated by Kennedy, is scheduled to convene later in June to discuss matters including COVID-19 vaccination.