Dr. Ed explains flu, COVID-19 vaccines no longer routinely recommended for children

TYLER, Texas (KLTV) - The Department of Health and Human Services has updated its vaccine recommendations for children.

The announcement comes in the middle of cold and flu season.

“All flu and Covid vaccines routinely should not be given to children unless they have risk,” infectious disease specialist Dr. Ed Dominguez explained.

He said the update also included no more routine vaccinations for Hepatitis B or for RSV, respiratory syncytial virus.

“At two months, the children were getting rotavirus vaccines. Those aren’t routinely recommended,” Dominguez explained. “That’s a type of diarrhea that can be very significant.

“At 12 months, the Hepatitis A vaccines are no longer routinely recommended. At 11 years, only one HPV papillomavirus vaccine is recommended for young children, but not two, and no further meningococcal routine vaccinations for a type of meningitis,” he said.

Dominguez said the choice is still available to parents, however, on whether or not to give their child the vaccines.

“There’s still going to be a lot of controversy about which vaccines we should give and how, but talk to your physician,” Dominguez said. “You guys should make the decision.”

He also noted no new data contributed to this change.

“What the administration did is they went back and looked at the old data, both good and bad studies, to come to these conclusions,” Dominguez said.

In another update, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. released new dietary guidelines urging Americans to avoid processed foods and added sugar. These guidelines can affect many things, including what is actually served to students and school, and what doctors recommend to their patients.

“They’ve inverted the food pyramid so that we’re eating a lot more fruit, fresh fruit, fresh vegetables, grains, natural grains and more proteins,” Dominguez said, noting it takes about four years for such recommendations to make it into school lunches.

Dominguez also said the biggest change was removing the recommended cap on drinking for adults.

“The government used to say one to two drinks a day at the most,” he said. “They still say limit alcohol, but they don’t tell us by how much, so that cap is taken and that’s a concern.”