OAN Staff Blake Wolf
4:14 PM – Friday, September 19, 2025
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) vaccine advisory committee unanimously voted to drop its recommendation for the COVID-19 vaccine, opting instead to recommend that the vaccine be administered “based on individual-based decision-making.”
Prior to the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) vote, the COVID-19 vaccines were administered to nearly every American who requested them due to the CDC’s recommendation stance, which could potentially shift to patients, although many major insurers proclaimed that they will continue to cover costs through at least 2026.
The vote follows recent restrictions placed on Pfizer, Moderna, and Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccines by the Food and Drug Administration, which prioritizes reservation for people over the age of 65, or individuals deemed higher risk.
For individuals aged between six months and 64 years old, the updated recommendation that individuals should make a personal decision based on available data, “with an emphasis that the risk-benefit of vaccination is most favorable for individuals who are at an increased risk for severe COVID-19 disease and lowest for individuals who are not at an increased risk, according to the CDC list of COVID-19 risk factors.”
“In the prior seasons of COVID, we’ve had routine vaccine access — you or I could go to our pharmacy or doctor’s office and just get our vaccine, it was encouraged as a routine recommendation,” stated Jen Kates, the director of global health and HIV policy at KFF.
Kates added that the vote means that COVID-19 vaccines are “no longer routinely recommended — it’s ‘shared clinical decision-making,’” essentially creating a “more narrow recommendation” than in previous years.
The committee also voted to decline the requirement for individuals to receive a prescription for the COVID-19 vaccine. The vote was split evenly at 6-6, which was broken by the ACIP Chair, Martin Kulldorff, who voted “no,” ultimately failing the motion.
A third vote saw the committee vote to require the CDC to clearly communicate the risks of receiving the COVID-19 vaccines, which states could choose to distribute when patients receive the vaccine.
The panel’s discussion on the COVID-19 vaccines was led by ACIP member Retsef Levi, a professor of operations management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management.
Levi was selected to lead the CDC’s COVID-19 working group in August, after previously being skeptical of the vaccine’s swift rollout during the pandemic. Levi previously argued that the vaccines had no proof of efficacy and were contributing to the overall death toll.
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