The Centers for Disease Control is recommending that children over six months old can get COVID shots after a consultation with a medical provider, contradicting HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy's push to drop the shots for healthy kids.
Why it matters: An update the CDC posted online late Thursday adds a new wrinkle to shifting federal recommendations on the shots, and Kennedy's efforts to do away with a COVID booster strategy for healthy children.
The massive Republican budget bill working its way through Congress has mostly drawn attention for its tax cuts and Medicaid changes.
But it would also take steps to significantly roll back coverage under the Affordable Care Act, with echoes of the 2017 repeal-replace debate.
Why it matters: The bill that passed the House before Memorial Day includes an overhaul of ACA marketplaces that would result in coverage losses for millions of Americans and savings to help cover the cost of extending President Trump's tax cuts.
The White House moved Thursday to correct false citations and other errors in a high-profile report from a panel led by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., HHS confirmed.
The big picture: The Make American Healthy Again commission report on causes of chronic illness in children cited hundreds of studies and sources, some of which didn't exist, NOTUS first reported.
Getting insurers to cover COVID-19 shots for healthy kids and healthy pregnant women may be much harder now that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has dropped the CDC's recommendation for those groups.
Why it matters: While most Americans under 65 have stopped seeking out COVID boosters, health experts say the change will erect cost and access hurdles for two groups at greater risk of developing serious complications from the virus.
China is becoming a top donor country to WHO after promising this month that it'll make a $500 million gift over five years to the group.
Why it matters: President Trump announced in January that he's pulling the United States out of WHO, leaving a power vacuum within the global health consortium that Beijing is trying to fill.
China is now setting the pace in life sciences R&D, conducting more clinical trials than the U.S. and licensing new discoveries to American companies.
The big picture: China has become a linchpin in global drug development, the result of a decade-long national strategy to develop a biopharmaceutical industry.
The Trump administration canceled a nearly $600 million award to Moderna to develop an mRNA vaccine for bird flu in humans, the company announced Wednesday.
Why it matters: It ends one of the remaining Biden-era efforts aimed at creating vaccines for pandemic preparedness. But the company said it would explore alternatives for further developing and manufacturing the shot.
