FDA chief says pregnant women should decide on Covid vaccine with doctors

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s decision to revoke the Covid vaccine recommendation for pregnant women has raised alarm from OB-GYNs.

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The Food and Drug Administration commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, said Wednesday that the decision of whether a pregnant woman should get a Covid vaccine should come down to a conversation with her doctor — not a recommendation by the federal government.

Makary took part in Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s announcement Tuesday revoking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendation that Covid shots should be offered to pregnant women and healthy children.

“The data on the Covid vaccine booster in pregnant women is a mixed set of data,” Makary said in an interview. “Now, I think the decision should be between a doctor and a pregnant woman, but the idea that the government has to tell you what to do in this in an area where there is mixed data.”

That assertion — that the data is mixed — isn't supported by evidence, vaccine experts say.

The CDC doesn't mandate vaccination. For decades its panel of independent vaccine experts, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, has recommended vaccination for certain groups of people based on data. The panel then passes recommendations to the director of the CDC to endorse. (For example, the CDC advises pregnant women to get an inactivated influenza vaccine during flu season.) The U.S. surgeon general established the committee in 1964.